


Tumblr Prompts for Writer's Month 2019

by itsalwaystheapocalypse



Category: Shades of Magic - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, Multiple One-Shots, Pre-Canon, Rhy and Luc take a prompt not about them and they MAKE it about them damn it, Serial Killer Gap Year, Tumblr Prompt, also kell x lila, avoid chapter 4 if you don't like dark stuff, but also fluff, danes do what they want, delilah bard is evil is one you were warned, excessive flirting, mostly fluff with some angst and dark stuff, post-canon without obvious spoilers, rhy flirts with everyone, smut makes an appearance, unapologetic holland x kell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-07-30 06:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 37
Words: 157,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20092513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsalwaystheapocalypse/pseuds/itsalwaystheapocalypse
Summary: This is a collection of the one-shots/drabbles I write in the Shades of Magic universe for Writer's Month 2019 on Tumblr. We've got it all here, folks - pre-canon sibling bonding, coffee shop AUs where Rhy and Luc steal the show, serial killer gap year with Astrid and Athos Dane and their poor captive Holland, a dark AU with a big plot change, the ongoing saga of Modern! Holland and Kell being awkward and cute...Come for Rhy and Luc flirting, stay for... well, let's face it, you're going to stay for Rhy and Luc flirting, too.TW: some chapters are going to be pretty dark and have some pretty dark content and some potential mature/not explicit but NSFW stuff. I will post a warning at the top of each chapter like that, so you can just skip those if needed. I promise there's plenty of fluff, too!





	1. Coffeeshop AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr Prompt: Coffeeshop AU
> 
> Rhy and Luc flirt with reckless abandon, Holland is an awkward grad student, and Kell doesn't care about Russian literature. Welcome to the madness.

“There are at least four coffee shops closer to our house, why did you drag Luc and I to this one?" Rhy sighed as they walked in the door, looking in at the tiny, cramped space crammed with couches, comfortable armchairs, and tables that seemed almost too close to each other for comfort. There were five or six people already here, mostly curled up alone with mugs of black coffee and books open in front of them, every one of them completely and totally ignoring the trio that had just walked in.

"I just like it," Kell said defensively, arms crossed in front of himself. Compared to Rhy and Luc's carefully put-together, coordinated outfits, Kell looked like a street urchin that tumbled out of an early 90's time machine. No amount of Rhy’s ribbing had been able to convince him to change out of a single piece of the flannel-over-T-shirt-over-ripped jeans outfit he’d insisted on wearing. "I come here all the time."

"I know you do," Rhy said with a tone of exasperated indulgence. "But_ why _?"

"Yeah, why?" Luc glanced around, taking in the exposed brick wall and metal piping in the ceiling with an expression of faint distaste. The light caught a piercing above his left eyebrow and made the blue stone in it shine. "It's the _ grad student _ coffee shop. Everyone in here is probably pretentious as shit."

"No more than you guys are,” Kell snapped. “That’s a really unfair thing to say and you’re just mad because your last TA didn’t let you skip half the classes. I just _ like _ it. It's quiet, or it used to be, before you came into it. And if you didn't want to come you didn't have to, Luc."

"Anywhere Rhy goes, I follow," Luc said cheerfully. "Even grimy coffee shops with his cranky-ass brother."

Kell rolled his eyes and stomped ahead of them. Luc and Rhy exchanged smiles, Rhy linking his pinky with Luc's while he looked around. "It's not so bad," Rhy said softly, pitching his voice low enough that Kell wouldn’t hear. "You don't have to tease him like that."

"But I _ want _to," Luc protested. "He just gets so mad about everything. It's adorable."

"How adorable?" Rhy raised an eyebrow, feigning jealousy.

"Not as much as when_ you _do it," Luc said with a grin, nuzzling into his neck. Rhy laughed and pushed him away.

"Will you stop being disgusting and come up to order?" Kell said from the counter, where a pink-haired barista looked with bland, distant friendliness in their direction, only to have the blandness drop away when she got a good look at Rhy.

"What's so disgusting? You're just mad you can’t get a date." Rhy stuck his tongue out and Kell visibly struggled against the urge to stick his out right back.

"Can I go ahead and take your order?" The barista asked, tilting her head to the side and smiling warmly into Rhy’s eyes. "I know what_ he _ wants. He always gets the same thing, large caramel macchiato. What can I get you two?"

"Large mocha, extra whipped cream, extra chocolate drizzle. Do you have sprinkles?" Rhy asked the question with guileless charm and the barista tucked a bit of hair behind one ear and smiled at him, nodding, scribbling it down on a piece of paper. When her head was bent down, Rhy grinned. "Oh, I like your hair! Did you just dye it? What dye do you use?"

"I, uh-" She looked back up, blushing faintly. Kell and Luc exchanged a _ look _. "Oh, this? Um. Yes. I dyed it last week, it used to be blue but then I thought, you know, pink might be fun?"

Rhy leaned one elbow on the counter, flashing bright white teeth in his dark face, black curls tumbling just so over one eye. "It looks amazing," he said, a little more softly. "You look _ great _with pink hair. What's your name? Do you live around here?"

"M-Melody," The barista stammered. "I'm Melody. I live in the, uh, the apartments back behind here?” Her voice squeaked, just a little on the last word.

“He’s doing it again,” Kell said flatly to Luc.

“Look, you’ve never been able to get him to stop, I don’t know why you think I can.”

Kell elbowed him in the ribs.

“Ugh, fine, I’ll try.”

"Melody,” Rhy said, dropping a ten dollar bill in the tip jar, “I'm Rhy Maresh, and I'd like to hang out sometime. I heard the Danes are playing next Saturday at our favorite bar, would you like to go with us to see them?"

Melody’s eyes widened and she blinked at him. “Us?”

Luc coughed politely into one hand behind him.

"Oh. Right. This is my boyfriend, Alucard Emery. I just meant hang out as friends."

"He's not flirting with you," Luc said smoothly. "This is just how he talks to everyone." There was a pause, and then Luc said, "Wait, Rhy, are you just flirting with _ everyone?" _

Melody the Barista blinked again, looking between them. "Alucard? Like Castlevania?"

“No, it’s-”

Kell leaned forward and said cheerfully, "Luc's Mom is a _ huge _ Castlevania fan from the video games, and that is _ exactly _who he's named after."

"It is not!" Luc snapped. "She didn't even know! It's an old family name!"

Kell snorted. "That's what she told you after you got _ mad _ about it. You're totally named after the video game and you know it."

Rhy sighed. "Oh, stop it, you two. In any case, Melody, Luc and I would love to hang out sometime. Just friends, of course."

"Of course," Melody repeated, a little numbly. "But, um. What does he want to drink? Your boyfriend?"

"Call me Luc," Alucard said smoothly. "I'd just like a double-shot, ristretto, please."

"You're so fussy." Rhy wrinkled his nose.

"You literally just asked for sprinkles on a mocha," Luc pointed out. “You’d ask them to put a candy cane in there if you thought they had any.”

Rhy looked at Kell, who sighed heavily and pulled a small candy cane out of the pocket of his jeans and handed it over. At Luc’s expression of surprise, he shrugged. “Trust me, you learn to plan for it.”

Melody the Barista, with the glazed-but-happy look almost everyone ended up with when Rhy gave them his full focus and attention for longer than two seconds, made their drinks while Luc and Rhy continued to bicker good-naturedly and Kell stared at the door, shifting from foot to foot nervously.

The third time he checked his phone for the time, Rhy sighed. "We're here because you're waiting for _ him _, aren't we?"

"No," Kell said sullenly, taking his drink and sitting carefully down at a table where he still faced the door.

"We totally are. We're_ totally _ waiting for him. This is why you come here after your classes on Tuesday and Thursday, isn't it? It’s Friday, you don’t even know if he comes here on Fridays."

“I’m sure he does. He’s writing his thesis, he’s here like every day.”

"Who's him?" Luc asked, glancing between them. “He’s a _ grad student? _”

"Don't you dare say a thing," Kell warned.

Rhy took his mocha, taking a big sip, smiling with a white moustache of whipped cream across his face. Luc leaned over and rubbed the moustache off with his thumb, then licked it off his own hand.

"You're both gross," Kell muttered.

"Jealous," Luc sing-songed, settling into their own chairs. "So we're here because Kell is waiting for someone?"

"We're not," Kell protested, without taking his eyes off the door.

"He's got a crush on this guy he met a few months ago," Rhy said, cheerfully ignoring him. "Older guy. He's actually pretty attractive, if you like them bookish, which…” Rhy gestured to Kell. “Look at him. He likes bookish. Anyway, the guy has glasses."

Luc's espresso came up, and he scooted closer and settled in to sip it from the tiny cup with one arm around Rhy's shoulders. "I want to meet him. Kell hates everyone, I'd love to see what someone he actually _ likes _ is like."

"I do _ not _ have a crush on him," Kell muttered. "He’s doing his thesis on beliefs about blood magic in Western Europe from prehistory to, I think like the early 19th century, and he did a presentation for my senior seminar class. So sometimes when I see him, we talk about how it's coming along."

Rhy and Luc shared a long, silent look. “Do you see him every Tuesday and Thursday?” Rhy asked, gently.

"I do not have a crush!" Kell snapped. Then the door opened, the little bell rang, and Kell forgot the two of them entirely. “That’s him,” He breathed out in a half-whisper, and then immediately looked down at his caramel macchiato, holding onto it with both hands like a liferaft.

“Definitely a crush,” Luc said.

Rhy snorted. “Definitely.”

The man who came in the door had black hair that swept over one eye and a pair of black-rimmed glasses that nearly matched in color, an old wool coat layered over a shirt and jeans, a scarf neatly wrapped around his neck.

In short, if Kell looked like a street urchin, this man looked like the street urchin’s rich, judgmental cousin.

"Oh," Luc said softly. "I see it now. Damn."

"Shut up," Kell said, but his voice was distant. 

"What's his name?" Luc whispered to Rhy.

"Holland something," Rhy whispered back with a shrug. "Kell knows but he won't tell me."

"You'd Google him like a stalker if I told you!”

"Who doesn't Google people? It's weirder that you don't," Rhy said, miffed. Luc tightened his arm and Rhy leaned into it.

Kell kept his eyes on his drink, watching from under his eyelashes as Holland Something-or-Other walked without looking to either side to the counter, ordering "the largest black coffee you have" in a deep, gravelly voice with a hint of warmth in it.

"Oooh, sexy voice," Luc murmured into Rhy's ear. "I _ definitely _ see it, now."

“I wish you hadn’t brought him,” Kell said, watching from under his eyelashes as Holland took his coffee and wandered over to the corner of the room, having apparently absolutely no awareness of anyone or anything around him, his book already open to read as he walked. “There’s no way I can talk to him if_ Alucard _ is here.”

"You should have told me why you were going to the grad student coffeeshop in the first place," Rhy pointed out. "Hold up. He saw you, I think he’s coming over. No, don’t look _ up _, let him think he surprised you! Damn it, you’re hopeless."

"Oh god," Kell said, in a voice that made it clear he would very much like to sink into the earth now.

Kell watched Holland’s heavy black boots cross the room and felt his heart pound in time with Holland’s footsteps. Finally, the boots stopped next to their table and, after a second, Holland cleared his throat politely. 

Kell looked up, trying to make it seem like he hadn't noticed him. "Oh," he said, and his voice cracked slightly. Luc turned his head suddenly and pushed it back behind Rhy’s, as though noticing something behind him, but Kell knew it was to stifle the smirk so Holland wouldn’t see it. "Hey, Holland."

"Hey, Kell. You, um. You come here on Fridays, too? I don’t think I’ve seen you before on a Friday.” He took a deep breath, and then said quickly, “I would have noticed if you were here.”

Kell looked up into bright green eyes only slightly blurred by the light bouncing off his glasses and for a second, struggled to even remember how to speak, let alone know what to say. "I, um... uh-"

"He brought us by," Rhy said smoothly, leaning over with his right hand out, smiling brightly up at Holland. "I'm Rhy Maresh, I'm Kell's brother - he wanted to show my boyfriend Luc and I his favorite coffeeshop. We usually hang out at the one on Pelham by our house."

"Right," Kell said, a little hoarsely. "That. That's why."

“_ You're _ Kell's brother?" Holland looked back and forth between them - Rhy, with his dark skin and curly black hair, wide mouth in a perpetual smile - and Kell, pale as liquid paper, red-headed, lanky, and eternally frowning. "That's..."

"Kell's adopted," Rhy said brightly. “My family owns Maresh Corp.? We brought Kell to live with us when he was little.”

"I had a feeling it was something like that," Holland said, a note of dry humor in his voice, and Kell's face turned new shades of red he hadn't thought possible before just now. "Well... it's good to meet you and, uh, to see you again, Kell. Are you going to the talk on nihilism in Russian literature next week?"

"Is he going to the _ what _ about _ what- _" Luc started, and then grunted as Kell kicked him hard under the table. 

"I, um. I might. When is it again?"

"Next Monday, 6ish I think. It’s over at Thames Hall. I'm going."

"Um. Yeah. Yeah, I’m… going." _ Shit, _ Kell thought with rising panic. _ I don’t know the first fucking thing about Russian literature. _

"Cool. I guess I'll see you there." Holland stood there, for a long moment of silence, and then said all in a rush, "I like your shirt. I'm going to go sit down now."

"Cool. Um, thanks. I'll see you next week." Kell watched him walk away, wishing desperately he had said something cooler than that - that he WAS cooler than that.

"Why did you say you'll go to that thing?" Luc asked in a hushed voice. "It's not like you _ read. _"

"I read! Anthropology has a ton of reading involved, thanks."

"Yeah, _ textbooks _. That hardly counts. You don't even like Russian lit, do you?"

"I'm surprised you even know what Russian literature _ is _," Kell hissed.

"You should talk to him more," Rhy said, swirling what was left of his mocha around. "Don’t pretend you know things, just be honest, he won’t mind. That man is_ extremely _ interested in you."

“He’s probably not,” Kell said miserably. “He’s just nice because I liked his presentation and no one else in class was even interested."

"Kell." Rhy leaned over, putting a hand over Kell's, looking at him with absurd seriousness. "Please, if you have never listened to a word I say before, listen now. That man _checked you out _when he was looking at your shirt. He made it a point to come over here just to say_ hi_ to you. He _invited you into his nerdery. _Please believe me when I say he is _one hundred percent into you._"

Kell swallowed, wondering if he was excited by this or terrified of it. "What do I _ do?" _

"You go to the fucking _ talk _ , that's what you do," Rhy said softly. "You go to this incredibly boring talk on something something Russians something sad books blah blah blah and you sit next to him. Then, afterward, you tell him you really need some coffee and to talk about what you heard, or you ask him for a drink, or you do… _ any _ of the things people who are dating do. Do you have his number?"

"No. When would I get it? It's not like it comes up-"

"Okay, first off, how you get a guy’s number is by fucking _ asking. _I sincerely hope Holland What's-His-Name is sexually attracted to morons, because you are really in rare form today.”

"You absolutely are," Luc said brightly.

"I hate you both," Kell mumbled. He could see, from the corner of his eye, Holland sitting in an armchair in the corner, legs up and crossed and book in his lap, sipping coffee absent-mindedly while he read. His hair was in his eyes, and Kell felt his mouth go a little dry just looking at him.

“What if I have his email?" He asked faintly.

"What?" Rhy blinked. "What about it?"

"I don't have his number, but his email was on the paper they handed out at the talk he gave. I sent him an email to get a copy of the presentation, so I have it saved. Would your idea work with email instead of his phone number?"

Rhy sat back, thinking. "Not my first idea, but plan B will definitely work with an email address. Kell, we are going to get you a date if it kills us."

"Speak for yourself," Luc said, reaching over to take Kell’s caramel macchiato, taking a drink while Kell rolled his eyes and tried to grab it back. "I have no familial responsibility for correcting your brother's congenital inability to talk to guys."

"In his defense, he can't talk to _ girls, _ either." Rhy grinned. "I've seen him try. The last one he hit on had a _ knife. _Although actually I don’t think she was threatening him with it… Anyway, you two stay here and bicker over absolutely nothing, I'll be right back." He hopped up out of his chair.

"What are you going to do?" Kell asked. “Don’t talk to him! Don’t you dare!”

"I’m not, I’m going to go talk to my new friend Melody behind the counter and put Plan B in motion. Now, like I said, just stay here and fight about pointless bullshit, I'll be right back."

"I'm on it, baby," Luc said brightly. "I can handle that. Kell's an uncultured swine."

"I am not!" Kell snapped. "You watch Cruel Intentions! And not ironically!"

"I'll have you know Cruel Intentions is based on a_ classic _French novel that is considered high literature," Luc sniffed, affronted.

"Which you have never,_ ever _ read."

"Well, no. Old books are boring. I'd prefer to watch Ryan Phillipe sneer at people for an hour and a half, preferably wearing as little clothing as possible."

Kell glowered at him.

"He has a really great sneer," Luc said, shrugging.

“You mean he has a great_ ass _.”

“Oh, do you think so? Glad you admit it.”

“I did _ not _-”

“Okay, you can stop fighting now.” Rhy had his most mischievous smile on as he leaned back over the table. Melody the Barista waved cheerfully to all of them and gave Rhy an exaggerated wink. “Great job following instructions, you both sound like hungry toddlers. Let's go. Kell, give me your phone while we walk."

They left, Kell sipping his rapidly cooling drink, watching with nervousness as Rhy opened up his email. He typed rapidly as they walked, Luc gently steering him around obstacles so he wouldn't just walk into them and fall over.

"What are you doing?" Kell said, trying to peer around to see the screen.

Rhy moved to block his view. "Nope, you're going to find out when Holland does."

"What? What are you doing? Are you sending him something? Are you talking to him? Don’t send him anything stupid."

“No, that’d just be if _ you _ sent him something,” Luc said serenely.

Kell, for once, did not take the bait. “What are you going to do, Rhy?” 

"Kell. What the hell did you_ think _I was going to do with his email?"

"I don't know!"

Luc shook his head. "You really are dumb as rocks, aren't you?"

"You're one to talk, you're dumb as ONE rock."

"Hell of a comeback, Maresh. My heart will never recover from this wound.”

"Ugh. What do you even _ see _ in him?" Kell snapped as Rhy handed the phone back. 

"You don't really want me to answer that," Rhy said, one eyebrow raising. “Listen, Kell. Luc plays bass guitar in a _ real band- _”

“We’ve opened for the Danes three times!” Luc said proudly, then the smile slowly faded. “The Danes are pretty fucked up, though, backstage. They do kinds of drugs I've never even _heard of._”

“Anyway,” Rhy continued, “he’s in a band, he has enough piercings to bother my mother, he’s _ hilarious _ , and he has _ very long fingers. _”

Kell turned red and furiously scanned through his phone, clicking over to sent emails. He stared for one long moment at the email Rhy had sent, and Luc grabbed him by one arm, yanking him to the left as he nearly walked into a light pole.

"This isn't going to work."

"Trust me," Rhy said reassuringly. "It _ definitely _ will."

A moment later, Kell’s phone buzzed with a notification that Holland had replied.

* * *

Back in the coffeeshop, Holland's phone buzzed and he frowned, carefully placing one hand to hold his book open to the right page while he picked it up.

His eyes widened, slightly, when he saw who the email was from and he looked up at the empty table where the three had been sitting a few minutes before. He hadn’t even noticed them leaving. Damn.

He’d meant to sort of wave casually, and he hadn’t even noticed.

Then he looked back down at his phone and opened up the new email, reading it carefully.

_ Let’s meet right here at 5 pm Monday. We could get coffee before we go see the talk. Melody’s got $15 on a gift card at the counter with your name on it. Buy me a drink. _

He glanced back up at Melody, who grinned knowingly at him and gave him two thumbs up.

Holland sat in silence staring at his phone for a long time, then carefully typed a reply. 

He erased it.

He typed a different one, then erased _ that, _and finally on the third try felt his reply seemed casual enough to work, like he was enthusiastic but not... overly so. It felt normal. It felt casual, like hey, let’s get coffee, not a big deal.

Wasn’t it kind of a big deal, though? He’d been trying to get the nerve up to ask Kell Maresh out since three days after his talk, when he’d first popped up to get coffee and they’d gotten to talking about it. It just seemed like every time he tried he ended up sounding angry or gruff or just stammering like an idiot.

Holland took a deep breath, wished himself luck, and pressed SEND.

_ I'll be here. I'll buy dinner afterwards, okay? _

_ Don’t say no, _ Holland thought. _ Don’t say no, don’t say no, don’t say no. _

He put the phone down and tried reading his book again. He read the same paragraph seven times before his phone buzzed again, and he couldn't remember a damn word of it.

He swallowed, hard, when he read the reply, and slowly began to smile.

_ I don’t know anything about Russian lit. I just wanted to go with you. Also I like Thai food. _


	2. The Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr Prompt: Hurt/Comfort
> 
> Kell still has nightmares after rescuing Rhy from a group that abducted him, even years later. And in a family where Rhy is the only one who sees Kell as truly belonging, it's Rhy who gets up and goes to him, every time.
> 
> Sweet pre-canon sibling bonding.

Rhy heard the screaming first, and came awake with a gasp.

His sixteenth birthday had been only the day before, and something about it must have set Kell off, because he hadn’t had nightmares like this in months, at least. 

But he’d been quiet all day yesterday, and quieter still at the Birthing Day party their parents had thrown, quiet in that particular Kell way that Rhy knew meant he was upset but didn’t want to say anything.

Kell never wanted to say anything, not until the nightmares started. And it wasn’t like Mother or Father would come to comfort him; they never did.

_If I had a nightmare_, Rhy thought bitterly,_ they’d be here in a flash. With Kell, they tell him he’s too old to need someone. Well_, and here Rhy thought himself very daring indeed, _fuck them if they won’t go to him, I will._

He all but leaped out of his bed, tripping on the clothes he’d abandoned on the floor the night before, falling over and crashing into a sidetable. “Damn it damn it damn it,” He muttered to himself at the ache, hastily pulling on his pants, having to sort of dance along the floor with one leg on as he went.

Kell continued calling out, voice slurred and blurry in sleep, and Rhy closed his eyes against the awful sound. 

_He_ was the one who’d nearly died, and Kell was the one who still dreamed about it.

He went through the door that connected their rooms, knowing Kell’s space as well as he knew his own, easily dodging the furniture and books and other assorted things Kell kept around. He touched a music box, briefly, a bit of a good luck ritual he’d started when Kell received it for his Birthday Day present. 

The music box had come from some mysterious benefactor a few years ago, and it played a song neither of them knew.

He made it to Kell’s bed only to find him curled up at the very edge, wrapped in blankets so tightly his arms were forced against his chest, hands curled into fists under his chin. His eyes were still closed.

Kell was grown, now, by Arnesian standards, but you could still see the boy in his chin and his jaw, and in his nightmares.   
  
“Kell,” Rhy whispered softly. “Kell, wake up.” Kell continued to call out, and Rhy heard the guards shifting in the hall outside his door, but they didn’t come in. They knew the difference. The guards had heard Kell’s nightmares before.

And they knew Kell would not appreciate anyone going to him but Rhy.

He shook Kell’s shoulder, and watched his brother’s eyes fly open, blue ringed in white and the black hardly visible at all in the dark. Kell struggled free of his blankets, pushing himself up, but his face was still empty and slack and Rhy thought he was fighting to wake up.

“Rhy,” Kell gasped out “Rhy, I couldn’t- too many- I couldn’t this time- there were too many and I was too late-”

_Why are his nightmares always that he was too late to save me? He never dreams of having to save himself, only me, always me. He’s never been scared of monsters under his bed; he’s too worried about the monsters under mine._

Rhy struggled with the discomfort of that knowledge. It wasn’t easy to know someone existed entirely to take care of you when they should have been able to take care of themselves. He just sat next to him on the bed, sliding an arm around his shoulder, trying to think of anything else he could do. Kell put his hands over his face with his elbows resting on his thighs, blankets pooled around his waist.

“You weren’t too late,” Rhy said quietly. “I am right here. I’m here with you, Kell.”

Kell didn’t say anything, or hug him back, but gradually he leaned his head against Rhy’s, into the crook of his neck, and the two brothers sat in silence as Kell’s shaking slowly subsided.

“Do you want me to stay in here tonight?” Rhy asked, once he could feel Kell had relaxed, staring off at the faint red glow coming in through his window, the comforting permanence of the Isle. “Bed’s big enough. Or I could sleep on your sofa. If you want.”

Kell was quiet for a long time, finally letting his hands drop, and Rhy saw silvery tear tracks marking his brother’s face as he nodded. “Please,” He said quietly. “Please stay, just for a while.”

“It’s all right,” Rhy said gently. “I’m here. I’m right here. We’re always brothers, understand? I’m right here with you.”

“I just don’t want to be too late,” Kell said softly. “What if one day I’m too late?”

Rhy smiled at him. “You’ve never been too late and you never will be. I trust you. Now, would you like to go back to sleep with me kicking you repeatedly every time you try to take up too much of the bed, or shall I sleep on the sofa?”

It worked; Kell’s frown faded, just a little, into the smile he only ever wore for Rhy. “Kick me,” He said, and his voice was still a little faded, but if he smiled, Rhy knew they’d made it past the fear this time


	3. Kell and Lila Dress for the Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Canon, Kell and Lila return to Arnes and dress for a gala held in their honor.
> 
> Well, they try to.
> 
> No explicit spoilers, but definitely spoiler-adjacent

“There are too many ribbons on this fucking dress,” Lila snapped, spinning around with it still bunched halfway up her arms.  
  
“Well, if you’d give me more than _ten seconds_ to get it on you-” Kell muttered, ribbons racing through his fingers as she pulled away from him. He met her glare with one perfectly calm blue eye and one stormcloud black one. “What? It’s not my fault Rhy’s throwing us a gala. I hate galas. He _knows_ I hate galas. He knows I hate wearing clothes like this,” He said, gesturing down at the Maresh Empire-red high-necked shirt and pants Rhy had chosen for him to wear. “It’s bad for skin like mine. Makes me look like I’ve got a fever or someone just embarrassed me.”  
  
“Luckily, you always look like someone just embarrassed you, so that’s fine.”  
  
“_Lila…_”  
  
“He’s doing this just to annoy us,” Lila announced, crossing her arms in front of herself, dress pooling around her waist.  
  
“I’ve no doubt of that…” Kell trailed off, his line of sight dropping a little. Lila frowned at him, puzzled, then then glanced down at herself. 

“Damn it, Kell!” She jerked her dress back up over her chest. “Focus!”  
  
“I _was_ focused,” Kell pointed out. “Then you took your dress half off. Then my focus changed somewhat.”  
  
“I’m going to murder you one day,” Lila said, but the words and the smile in her voice didn’t quite match. 

“I’ve no doubt, and it’ll be the most enjoyable murder that’s ever been inflicted on me. Please, let’s try one more time. This is the first party he’s thrown since we came back, I want to… to make him happy.”   
  
“You do that just by being around him.” She let Kell pull the sleeves of the dress back up over her arms, stood as quietly as she could while he moved around behind her, his fingers grazing across the nape of her neck before dropping to pull tight the pile of black ribbons that made up the back of her dress. She grunted as he pulled a little too tight, yanking away from him. “Hey! I have to breathe while I’m dancing, don’t I?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Kell said honestly. “I never do. I just hold my breath and hope for the best. And try not to fall over.” He frowned at her back. “I think I’ve done the best I can.”  
  
There was a knock at the door. “Are you ready?” A cheerful male voice called.  
  
Kell rolled his eyes, but Lila was already at the door, flinging it open to admit Alucard Emery in a finely-made blue shirt and pants that had silver thread that glimmered, recalling the silver around his hands and eyes that never faded away, marking him as a survivor.   
  
“Don’t you look lovely,” Alucard said appreciatively, looking Lila over. She grinned and spun around so he could see the back of the dress. “Oh, but who’s fucked your back up like that?”  
  
“I did,” Kell ground out through gritted teeth. 

“Kell helped,” Lila said, shrugging. “I couldn’t do it myself, could I?”

“Kell clearly can’t do it, either. I’ll fix it, not to worry.” Luc shot Kell his most serene smile, the one he knew the _Antari_ hated most, and had Lila’s back done up in a flash, ribbons laying perfectly flat against her skin and tied at the bottom in a perfect bow. “There. Now you’ll shock us all with your beauty.”   
  
Lila snorted. “Or I’ll scandalize them with my_ hair.”_  
  
“Short hair will be in fashion next season once they’ve seen you, mark my words,” Luc said gently. “It looks good like that. You’re a picture. A portrait. They’ll be lining up to dance with you!”  
  
Lila wrinkled her nose. “Really? I’m not going, then.”  
  
Kell stifled a laugh.  
  
“You have to go. Rhy expects you both to be right there beside him, after all. Ah, Kell, let me look at you.” Luc gave him the exact same up-and-down gaze he’d given Lila, smirking as Kell flushed bright red at the attention. “You look… alive.”  
  
“You look the same,” Kell replied dryly, scowling down at himself. He looked back up, a little uncertainly. “Does it look that bad?”  
  
“Of course not, Kell.” Alucard put a hand on his shoulder, and for just a moment the hostility dropped off both men’s faces. “Rhy will be pleased. Should we go see if we can catch him before the festivities begin?”  
  
Kell took a deep breath and nodded.   
  
Luc smiled. “Don’t be nervous. He’s been waiting months for this. Just try not to fall over, eh? I still remember when Rhy forgot to tell you he invited that girl you liked and you stepped on both her feet_ four times_-”

Kell glared right at him, into his perfect serene handsome face. “I’m going to murder you one day,” He said darkly.  
  
“Hey!” Lila snapped her fingers between them, and both turned to look at her. “That’s_ my_ line.”  
  
Then she swanned out the door and the two men only very briefly elbowed each other when they followed her


	4. Prompt 4: Road Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter involves some very dark characters, and is a pretty dark one-shot with some even darker implications. In short, read at your own risk, and I promise I write things where Holland Vosijk gets to be happy. Just go back to Chapter 1, where he'd a grad student who gets a date! That one was happy, right? We can just go back to that.
> 
> Seriously. If you're not up for Sad! Holland and Psychopaths on a Spree! Danes, do not read this chapter.

“Can’t I just stay out here and put gas in the car?” Holland asked heavily, pulling up the tiny convenience store. “And why couldn’t we get something less conspicuous than this?” He gestured broadly forward. They were parked at the gas station’s third pump in a bright red two-door sports car the twins had stolen and put fake dealer plates on at least three states ago. 

“You’ll go in with Athos, like usual,” Astrid said brightly. She had her feet up on the dash in the passenger seat, bright red toenails glinting in the Arizona sunshine, wearing a pair of black shorts that were more underwear than clothing and a thin black tank top that had red lace peeking out of it along the shoulders and back, daring men to look. Athos was fairly sure at least a few had. Those men were dead. “I wanted a red car, I got a red car. Athos picked a good one, too.”

“We take what we want,” Athos said from the backseat. “Sports cars, liquor… you.” He leaned forward, putting a hand on Holland’s shoulder, rubbing his thumb back and forth along that little bit of bone that stuck out just before the curve of his shoulder began. Holland sat very still, the air conditioning still blowing icy chill at them.

Holland always wore sunglasses when he drove these days, and the only part of him that gave away his thoughts was the corner of his mouth, where Athos could see it turn down, just slightly, as his jaw tightened up.

“If I go in, you’ll just make me steal,” Holland said carefully, not moving, keeping his hands on the steering wheel, gripped around it so hard his knuckles were white on one side. His right hand was closed more loosely, fingers splayed awkwardly. “We have the money. Let’s just pay for everything this time.”

“We always pay for the gas,” Astrid pointed out helpfully. 

“No you don’t.”

“Oh. Well, we _mostly_ pay for the gas, anyway.”

“No,” Holland said flatly. “You don’t.”

“We’ll pay this time,” Athos said soothingly. “Come on, it’s our first road trip together! It’s been fun trying to visit every state with you!”

“Has it?” 

He couldn’t quite use his right hand as well as he used to, not since he’d tried to signal someone for help. Now he used his left hand instead. 

“Well, _I’ve _been having a great time,” Astrid said brightly. “Go in with Athos, Hol. You know what happens if you don’t listen.”

There was a moment of silence and then he dropped his hands from the steering wheel. “Fine. Get your feet off me. I’ll go in with him. At least say we all wear shoes this time.”

Astrid laughed, and Athos smiled at the sound. He loved to hear his sister laugh, and Holland made her laugh _so _much. A pity they’d never come across anyone like him before. An even bigger pity that this couldn’t last forever, that sooner or later he’d be too much trouble to keep around.

Astrid slid her feet back into her flip-flops and the three of them got out of the car, Holland sliding the front seat forward so Athos could climb out. 

Athos was wearing a black tank top and old jeans that had faded into something nearly colorless by now, his own white-blond hair blowing loose in the hot wind. Holland’s white T-shirt looked terribly out of place with the two of them dressed in black, but Athos liked him like that, and so did Astrid. Their opposite image man.

“Hey, Hol,” Athos said softly, reaching out to brush his hand against Holland's stomach. “You’re looking good today.”

“Don’t,” Holland said tightly, but he fell into step with Athos as the two of them walked inside, Astrid staying out for the moment to put gas in the car. She watched them go in a pair of cherry-red sunglasses shaped like hearts, perfectly paired to match the red lace of her bra and the paint on her toenails, her white-blonde hair in a braid that ran halfway down her back, tendrils pulled free to hang just so around her beautiful face.

There was an immense cruelty in that face, and Athos loved her without reservation. She was his twin sister, and they had always been exactly the same, two halves of the same whole. They kept Holland and they loved him, too, in their own way.

Holland might not have called it love.

“You know the drill,” Athos said as he held the door, letting Holland walk in ahead of him. The other man said nothing in reply, only kept his eyes on the ground as the blast of air conditioning hit them with a brick of ice compared to outside’s dry, oppressive heat. “You say a word to anyone, we’ll make everyone in this place fuckin’ regret it. If anyone dies today, it’s on you.”

Holland was silent, but he followed Athos obediently enough. He picked up a bag of chips, looked it over, slowly put it back. "What," Athos said brightly. "You don't like Takis?"

Holland didn't answer, picking up a bag of cheddar and sour cream chips to hold onto, wandering towards the soda case. Athos watched him, enjoying the sight of the thin white T-shirt slightly damp with sweat in the center of his back, the muscles in his arms and his wrists. He held his right hand closer to himself, Athos noted, protectively. He never took off his sunglasses. 

While Astrid waited outside for the car’s tank to fill, Athos and Holland picked out chips, sodas, some bottles of water. There were people in here; a mother with two small children arguing over gummy bears, the cashier looking emptily off at nothing, what looked like a truck driver staring fixedly into the beer case as though it would simply embrace him if he stood there long enough.

Holland didn’t speak to a single one of them. He knew better by now. He only held the things that Athos handed him - chips, beef jerky, a six-pack of beer clutched in a right hand that wouldn’t quite close all the way - and followed him, did as he was told.

_ He’ll do, _Astrid had said, and they’d both thought he might last a week, maybe two. But it had been nearly three months now, and Holland was still here. They couldn’t bear to kill him and sure as fuck couldn’t let him go.

Athos let his fingers touch the damp spot on Holland’s back, watched him stiffen. “Don’t,” he said again, in the same tone as he’d said it outside; flat and not quite hostile. “Not here.”

Astrid was signaling to him from outside that she was done, and Athos smiled at her, holding up one finger. She must have been able to see it, because he saw her climb back into the passenger side of the car, keys in hand.

“We’re going to check out now,” He said quietly. The two children were still arguing, the sound like ice picks in his mind. “You’re going to put some chocolate bars in your pockets and walk right back out there.”

“Don’t make me steal,” Holland said, quietly, not quite pleading. “It’s stupid. We have the money.”

Athos took everything from Holland's arms, smiling. Cold beer in the backseat of the car was going to be amazing. “I don’t care if we have the money. I want you to steal. Are you going to do what I tell you?”

Those mirrored sunglasses (a $600 designer gift from Astrid, even though Holland had never once shown any sign of appreciating her generosity) reflected his smile right back at him, even as Holland's mouth narrowed, just a little, in bitter rage. “Yes.”

“Good.” The arguing of the children suddenly got more intense, louder, and Athos narrowed his eyes in that direction. “I fucking hate kids. I should go over there-”

“No,” Holland said softly, glancing to each side, then stepping slightly closer. Athos watched with pure and unadulterated joy as Holland tilted his head so his hair fell over one eye the way he knew they liked. "Ignore them. We're about to leave, anyway. Don’t worry about anyone else. I’ll pay. You go back out to the car.”

“I can’t let you alone,” Athos replied, patting the side of his face gently. “You’ll tell someone.”

“No, I won’t,” Holland said softly. Someone else came in, and Holland pulled back, looking back at a rack of state maps, rubbing uneasily at the back of his neck. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t.”

“I’ll stay with you until we’re done paying. Now put something down your pants to steal.”

Holland chose some candy, and Athos raised an eyebrow when it wasn’t the chocolate, but chose to let this one slide. Let Holland have his little rebellions. He only got to have them in the daylight, after all.

Athos paid, not even trying to make conversation with the cashier, who looked brain-dead anyway. He could have killed everyone in this gas station and made Holland watch. They’d done it before, made Holland watch when Athos felt the itch. Astrid thought that was its own great fun. Then they drove away, and never stayed long enough to see the crime report. 

There were no bulletins on the national news. They’d seen no Wanted posters. They kept moving, and they were careful who they killed, picking people like Holland with no family to miss them and very few or no friends at all, and no one knew to watch for them.

If they took out people here, though, they’d be on camera. These people probably had someone who would miss them. Athos wouldn’t mind, he’d always wondered what it would be like to lead cops on a merry chase, but Astrid would be angry. She wanted this wonderful summer to last as long as possible. They were going to visit every state in the country, after all, and you couldn’t rush that sort of thing. You had to have fun with it.

Astrid and Athos had left at least one body in every state so far. Holland’s roommate had been state number 7, and he’d been with them ever since. There'd been a kid back in… oh, Michigan or something, and they'd almost tossed Holland aside for him. Just a redhead walking down the road by himself, a teenager practically asking to be abducted. Holland had talked them out of that one, although ‘talked’ wasn’t exactly the right word for how he’d convinced them, and Astrid had never wanted anyone but him since.

They must be on state 30 by now, right? Only 20 to go, and part of Canada. 

Athos was _ really _interested in how many bodies they could leave behind them in Western Canada. They’d have to steal a new car, though, if they didn’t want to be conspicuous and end things too early. 

He wanted this summer to last, too.

They walked back out, Holland just ahead of him as always. Athos stayed just close enough to be oppressive, and he could tell by the way Holland’s shoulders hunched that he was very much aware that it was on purpose. 

“Can I take a break from driving?” Holland asked, quietly. “I’m tired. I need to nap.”

“Yeah,” Athos said after a moment’s thought, and watched Holland’s shoulders relax, just a little bit. “Astrid can drive. You can sit in the back with me.”

The shoulders tensed again.

“Y-you could sit up front-” Holland started, and his voice sounded younger, worried, and Athos felt a thrill up his spine. 

“I don’t want to. I want to sit with you.”

He could see it, even though Holland’s sunglasses always hid his eyes. He could see the remaining fight in him, how he wanted to throw a punch and try to run, even though this gas station was the only thing for twenty miles in any direction in the scorching, blistering Arizona heat. 

He could see that Holland wanted to run back in, beg them to call the cops.

He could see Holland think better of it, remembering the times he’d tried, the people who had suffered. He could see him force himself to relax again, and all of his emotions were sweet as sugar in Athos’s mind. What kept Holland alive, he thought, was that there was still fight in him. It was stuck down deep, but it was in there, and Athos would never let him die until all of it was gone.

Astrid was happy enough to drive, sliding her sandals back off to press the pedals barefoot. She smiled at Athos in the rearview mirror as they threw up gravel pulling out of the parking lot and he smiled back. This summer had been so amazing, so perfect, so beautiful. It had been everything they’d dreamed it would be, and they were _ getting away with it. _

Holland leaned his head against the window, sitting as far away from Athos as possible, though he couldn’t go far in the car’s tiny bucket seats.

“Take off your glasses,” Athos said softly. Holland hesitated, then did as he was told. His eyes were shadowed, haunted, and very, very green. He had a pretty wicked black eye ringing one, still healing, a mottled mix of blues, purples, reds, and yellows. Athos thought he looked like a painting. He was furious, and furiously beautiful. “Good. Your eyes are so pretty, I like to look at them.”

Holland said nothing, only stared out the window as the landscape blurred by.

Astrid fiddled with her iPod as she drove, scrolling through songs until she found one she wanted, only half-watching the road. Somehow, nothing was ever in her way. Somehow she never swerved or had an issue. Somehow, it always worked for her. 

Music began to blare through the speakers, a crooning female voice layered over crunching, industrial metal guitar, singing in Swedish. She settled back into her seat. “Do it,” She said to Athos, the cherry-red hearts over her eyes making her look, Athos thought, like a movie star.

“Can I?” Athos asked.

Holland knew what they were talking about, and his face went white. “No,” he said quietly, but neither of them listened. They never listened to Holland, unless it was to throw his pain right back in his face 

“This road is nice and flat.” Astrid’s voice was bright and cheerful. She was the center of Athos's world, and he would have done anything for her. He knew, without ever having to ask, that she would have done anything for him.

Holland had been her choice, but he'd really been a gift for Athos, and both of them had known it from the first time they saw him.

“Go ahead," Astrid said brightly. "I’ve got my music up and I’ll keep my eyes on the road, I promise. I had most of the fun last night, you deserve a turn.”

Astrid turned the music up until it was so loud the lower notes vibrated in the frame of the car, settled back, and watched the highway stretch out before them.

Athos grinned and leaned over, unbuckling Holland’s seatbelt. “C’mere,” He said, and his voice was soft and warm .

Holland hesitated. It was the hesitation that Athos loved; watching the pain in his face, and the anger, the defiance that fought to rise to the surface, turn gradually into resignation. Most of them they killed at that point, but something about Holland had kept he and Astrid interested longer than ever before.

Holland hadn’t given up hope; not yet, not all the way, and Athos could almost taste it. His hope was keeping him alive; just not maybe the way he might have thought.

Finally, he looked at Athos and said quietly, “What do you want me to do?”

Athos grinned, sitting back. “You know what I want you to do.”

He watched Holland’s left hand close slowly into a fist, then just as slowly open back up again. "Can I put my sunglasses back on?"

He and Astrid met gazes in the rearview mirror, and he knew the blue of hers behind those sweetheart sunglasses would perfectly match the color of his own. They were two halves of a whole, had always been. She'd always given him exactly what he needed to be happy, and he had always been there for her just the same way.

"No," He said, and his smile changed. "I want you to look me in the eyes this time."

This had been the best fucking summer of his entire life.


	5. Holland and Kell's Second Date (Day 5: Sound)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Holland Vosijk, Grad Student, and Kell Maresh, Undergrad, go on their second date.
> 
> Oh man, you guys, this one got away from me. I hope you like awkward flirting and banter.

“I look stupid,” Kell said, despairing. “I feel stupid. I _ am  _ stupid.”

“Kell,” Rhy said soothingly, “You look fine. Remember? Holland  _ likes _ your awful band shirts. I mean, I think you could eventually stop wearing  _ flannels _ over everything, but you know, you’ve got a look and you stick with it. That look is very… 90’s child, which is weird, but you know, it’s a look. If he didn’t like the way you dress, and act, and talk, he wouldn’t have agreed to meet with you again.”

“No, I’m _ definitely _ stupid. I asked him to meet me at a  _ bar _ . He’s a guy who goes to fucking book signings, Rhy! And I invited him to see Luc’s  _ band _ play?What if-”

“Kell,” Rhy said more firmly this time. “People who read are also people who go to bars, I promise. How the hell are you this old and you haven’t grasped that concept?”

“Because I’m stupid?”

Rhy took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and slowly let the breath out through his nose. “I swear to God, Kell. He said yes. If he said yes, then it means he had fun with you last time. Trust yourself a little more, yeah?”

“But, at the end of last time, we didn’t even-” Kell could feel the heat in his face, and hoped that it being dark and half the streetlights being out would help hide it. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “We didn’t even  _ kiss  _ at the end.”

“You didn’t?  _ Jesus _ .” Rhy stared at him in horror. “The last time I went out with someone and didn’t kiss them, I was fourteen years old and Mom _ drove  _ me.” He frowned, thinking. “Maybe he’s just nervous, too. Maybe he doesn’t date very much.”

“Is that possible? Like,  _ physically possible? _ He’s… so... you know. _ ” _

“Maybe. Maybe you’re both idiots destined to be together forever. Look. This man said yes less than twenty minutes after you texted him asking if he wanted to go. No guy on Earth replies yes that fast if he doesn’t really, _ really  _ want to see you.”

“Everyone  _ you’ve  _ ever dated got back to you that fast.”

“Yes, because I’m fucking gorgeous and an amazing boyfriend and they all really,  _ really _ wanted to see me.”

Kell rolled his eyes, then frowned nervously back down the street. It was already dark, this late in the year, and he shivered a little as the cold cut right through the thin flannel. Rhy was right; he should’ve worn his good coat, the one Emira had bought for him when she’d realized his old one made him look shabby when he stood next to Rhy. 

“I just felt like I tripped all over myself the whole time. It’s like every time he looks at me I get dumber. He’s  _ really smart,  _ Rhy, and I sound like a goddamn idiot whenever he looks at me.”

“Yes,” Rhy said thoughtfully. “That’s true.”

Kell stared down at himself. He didn’t really care about clothing, but he’d tried, he really had. He’d worn a nicer shirt, and a different flannel, a newer one that was red and black. His jeans were… oh no. Was he wearing the _ same jeans?  _ _   
_

Was Holland the sort of person who’d notice if he wore the same jeans? They were just jeans, right? Nobody noticed jeans. 

“I’m going to die of a panic attack before he gets here,” He said weakly.

“No you’re not, Luc knows how to use the defibrillator behind the bar,” Rhy said cheerfully. “Besides, you don’t have time for a panic attack, he’s about a block away heading right for us.” He leaned over, giving Kell a quick one-armed hug, whispering in his ear, “You got this, okay? Trust me, he really,  _ really _ likes you. I’m going to go see if Luc is done with warmup.” Then he ducked back inside the bar. 

The problem with Holland Vosijk, the older man and incredibly intelligent grad student who had inexplicably now agreed to not one but  _ two dates  _ with him, was that he made Kell’s brain shut off, and all his thoughts turned into a buzzing sound inside his brain as he watched Holland walk towards him.

Oh no. Holland was going to talk to him and he was just going to vomit out nonsense syllables until he literally died of the humiliation.

When he looked over his shoulder at the door, hoping to see Rhy still there, the bouncer standing next to it (one of Rhy’s exes from high school, and one of the ones Kell had actually liked, Ben or something) gave him a thumbs up.

How the hell did Rhy’s friends pop up everywhere he went, and why were  _ all of them  _ aware that Kell was trying to start a relationship by running headfirst into a brick wall?

Holland raised one wave in a casual wave as he got close, and Kell raised his own, briefly forgot how to move his arm, and then waved, too. Holland looked even  _ better  _ in the dark. He was wearing the same coat and scarf, but an obviously nicer button-up shirt and dark jeans over his heavy black boots.

Kell had memorized those boots. He thought about those boots (and the legs above them, and the stomach under the shirt above _ that _ , and what it would be like to take his glasses off his face for him) way too often since they’d first met.

“Hey,” Holland said, and his voice was so warm and low, a little gravelly, and Kell thought, _ he’s so fucking cool.  _

“Thanks,” Kell said, and his voice cracked. He tried to cover it with a cough, heading inside, cursing at himself silently the whole way. 

Holland frowned over his shoulder. “The bouncer didn’t card us. Aren’t they supposed to card everybody? Isn’t that… a law?”

“Yeah, he and Rhy had a thing a while back, he knows how old I am.”

“But your brother is dating…”

“Luc. Who is an  _ asshole,  _ but he’s an asshole in a band Emira disapproves of, so Rhy is in love.” Kell rolled his eyes. 

“Emira?”

“Rhy’s mother.”

“Ah. So he’s the bass player in Night Spire? I wouldn’t have called that. Your brother looks so…”

“Rich? Preppy?” Kell grinned. “Yeah, Rhy went to prep school and he still kind of dresses like it, but he thinks  _ Alucard Emery’s eyebrow piercing  _ is badass.”

“You two went to  _ prep school? _ ” Holland looked so shocked Kell almost let him believe it. His surprised face was pretty wonderful.

“Um… no. When I came to live with them, I didn’t really know anything.” Kell hated this story. He’d told it, answering the same questions, ten thousand times in his life. Talking to business partners of the Maresh family, local politicians, reporters, that woman from  _ People Magazine,  _ the man from  _ Architecture Digest _ … he’d answered some version of this so many times the words tumbled out without him even needing to think. And it always ended with some variation on  _ wasn’t it so nice of them to bring you home,  _ like Kell had been a puppy they found on the side of the road and not a traumatized child with a pile of repressed memories larger than the Maresh family yacht.

“Where did you live before?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really remember anything from before? But I know I didn’t really talk. They couldn’t tell how much I knew, I wouldn’t even do the alphabet or anything, so they got me a private tutor. It just kind of stuck. Rhy went to his fancy private school and I stayed home, mostly.” He snorted. “It made them look good for the magazines, anyway.”

Holland was silent for a long moment, and then he finally said, “That’s intense.”

“What about you?” He looked over his shoulder, leaning over the bar on his elbows, trying to catch the bartender’s attention. She was another ex of Rhy’s, but Kell had yet to see Rhy change relationship partners and  _ not  _ stay friends with them afterward.

Holland was quiet again, although he leaned over next to Kell, their arms brushing just slightly. Kell’s whole left arm lit up like lightning everywhere he could feel Holland touching him. “I don’t. Um.” He frowned, and it was probably the nicest looking frown Kell had ever seen. “I don’t really talk about any of that.”

“Oh, sorry.” He’d ruined it. He’d ruined the whole night and they had only even been here together for ten minutes. He should just give up and go hide in the bathroom-

“No, it’s okay. I think… I think I can tell you.”

_ I think I can tell you.  _ Kell’s heart dropped somewhere around his knees and bounced back up again. 

“I went to public school for a while, but this whole thing with my brother happened and I had to drop out. I ended up getting my GED at 16 anyway, so it kind of worked out.”

Kell was still trying to think up how to reply to _ that _ life story when the bartender finally noticed them, leaning over to give him a smile with all the mischief he usually saw in Rhy. She whispered into Kell’s ear, “Is this the guy? Rhy told me there’s a  _ guy. _ ”

“Isra, shut up, he’s  _ right here, _ ” Kell hissed, aware that his face was reddening again. Luckily bars were dim, and loud, and Holland probably hadn’t heard. He was looking over at the stage, anyway, with a weird expression of surprise and dismay on his face. 

“Rhy already paid for all your drinks,” She said, pulling back to look them both over. “Whatever you want, it’s on Rhy’s house tonight.”

Kell ordered a whiskey sour with extra cherries. Holland still wasn’t looking at him and he finally reached out, hesitantly nudging him to get his attention. “Hey. What do you want to drink?”

Holland blinked, looking back down at him. “Oh. Uh,” And he turned to look back to the bartender. “Whatever your best stout beer is, thanks. I’m not picky.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow. “That’s about what I expected.”

“What does  _ that  _ mean?” Holland asked, but she just smiled serenely and walked away. 

Holland was silent again until their drinks came up, and Kell wasn’t sure how to get the conversation going again. Luc’s band had nearly finished setup, and Kell waved at the keyboardist. She waved back with a strangely vicious smile ringed in her signature black lipstick, pointed at Holland, and mouthed  _ is that the guy? _

Kell scowled at her. 

The keyboardist was one of Luc’s friends. She was basically a walking knife collection and Kell was simultaneously afraid of her and in love with her. Or… he had been, until he’d met Holland Vosijk.

“You’re quiet,” Kell said softly. “I shouldn’t have asked about school. I’m sorry.” 

_ I ruined it. I’m stupid. I can’t believe I ruined our second date. _

“No, that’s fine, it’s just… you didn’t tell me Luc was playing with the _ Danes _ tonight.”

“Yeah, he opens for them a lot. Do you not like their music?”

“No… that’s not it. It’s just that I-” Holland broke off, thinking, taking a drink of his beer. “That’s not it. It’s fine.” Kell lifted one of the two toothpicks full of cherries Isra had given him, chewing one off the end. He had touched his teeth to the second when Holland said without looking at him, in a quick rush of words, “Any music I hear with you is going to be good music.”

Kell froze, cherry held between his top and bottom teeth, and thought he was probably still panicking, but the  _ type _ of panic had changed.

Holland turned to look at him, his mouth open as though he were going to say something else, and Kell  _ saw  _ those brilliant green eyes drop to his open mouth, with the cherry still held between his teeth. He was suddenly very aware of every single piece of clothing he was wearing and how it felt against his skin. 

“Did that bartender give you  _ eight cherries? _ ” Holland asked, in a voice that was nearly hoarse. His glasses had slipped slightly down his face.

“Yes.” Before he could think enough to stop himself, Kell bit the cherry off the end, dropped the toothpick back into his drink, and leaned over to gently push Holland’s glasses back up. “They slipped,” He said, softly.

Holland just blinked at him, swallowed so hard Kell could  _ see _ his Adam’s apple move, then slowly turned away, drinking from his beer for so long it probably counted as ‘chugging’. Kell heard him mutter, “Jesus  _ Christ _ ,” to himself under his breath.

_ Was that a good Jesus Christ or a bad one?  _

Rhy chose exactly that moment to pop up at his elbow, all smiles and sparkling eyes. He was already on his third drink, and Kell frowned, taking the mostly-full glass right out of his hand. “Take your  _ time _ , Rhy, how many times do I have to tell you-”

“I will if you finish this one,” Rhy said, grinning. “I don’t even like it. Astrid Dane bought it for me. She says I have ‘pedestrian’ taste in drinks, and this shit she bought is bitter as _ hell  _ but it burns enough that it’s  _ got _ to be good. _ ” _

Holland jumped, turning to look at them. “Astrid  _ Dane _ bought that? Kell, don’t-”

Kell blinked at him, already most of the way through chugging it down as fast as he could, wincing at the bitter fire that burned down his throat. He put the empty glass down on top of the bar, blinking. “What?”

Holland sighed. “Too late.”

The Night Spire had finished setting up, and Kell leaned back against the bar, looking over at Rhy, as they lit right into the first song, with Luc singing backup vocals as well as playing bass. His brother stood, not even remembering to order his new drink, watching Luc play with a small, private smile and a face full of love. 

Isra set something that was obviously made with pineapple juice and a tiny umbrella down on the bar. Rhy picked it up without ever looking away from Luc.

The three of them stood in a silence that wasn’t really awkward, listening to Night Spire. Holland made comments, occasionally, and Kell answered them or tried to come up with something -  _ anything _ \- on his own, but his earlier stumbles had made him too nervous to say much. 

He was drinking too fast, he knew that. He shouldn’t have  _ started  _ by downing most of Rhy’s drink. But the more he drank, the less nervous he felt, the more comfortable he was. When Holland slowly slid an arm around behind his shoulders, he stiffened at first and then slowly leaned into it, finishing the last cherry from the second toothpick. 

“He sounds good tonight,” Kell said to Rhy around the fifth or sixth song’s ending. He actually wasn’t sure how long they’d been playing, his entire sense of time had condensed to wondering how long Holland’s arm had been around him. Holland was well into a glass with some brown liquor in it by now and even his eyes had begun to shine with it.

_ Fuck, his eyes are so green. I wonder what he looks like with his glasses off. I wonder what he looks like with his  _ shirt  _ off.  _

“He does sound good,” Rhy said dreamily. “He always sounds good. I love the way he sounds. Sometimes he sings to me in bed-”

“Ugh, shut up. I know, I live in the room on the other side of your wall, remember? He  _ looks  _ good tonight, too, but if you tell him I said that I’ll murder you in your sleep.”

“Don’t talk to _ me _ ,” Rhy said, nudging him with an elbow. “Talk to your  _ date _ .”

“I don’t know what to say.” The music was loud enough that he didn’t think Holland could hear him, leaning over like he was to speak right into Rhy’s ear. “I can’t exactly talk about his  _ thesis  _ here.” 

“It’s a  _ bar. _ With a  _ band. _ ” Kell gave him a blank look and Rhy snorted. “Ask him to  _ dance _ , dumbass.”

Kell looked at him with wide eyes. “But I can’t dance.”

“You can when you’re drunk, I’ve seen you. Finish your drink,” Rhy said with exaggerated patience, “Grab him by the hand, and ask. his ass. to dance. with you. Fuck, Kell, how do you  _ brush your teeth _ in the morning?”

“What if _ he _ doesn’t dance?” Kell hissed.

Rhy grinned. “He’ll dance with  _ you. _ Your song’s up.”

“My  _ what _ now?”

Luc stepped up to the mike, handing his bass guitar over to the quiet religious guy who normally sang lead. He leaned over to the mike, a little bit of his curly brown hair falling over his face, the piercing above his left eye glinting in the stage lights. “We’re trying something a little different tonight. I don’t normally sing lead, but I have this song I’ve been working on as a favor for my Rhy-Guy - you guys know Rhy - and I’d like to see what everyone thinks.” 

“I think if you call me that again on stage I’ll stab you!” Rhy called out good-naturedly.

There was appreciative applause and some cheers from an audience Kell thought must be at least half Luc and Rhy’s combined exes and friends. If it were anyone else, that might have meant the bar was half-empty, but since it was Luc and Rhy,  _ it was packed. _

“This is your song,” Rhy said softly. “Go dance.” 

The music started up, a low, slightly distorted guitar that seemed to waver back and forth, and all the blood drained from Kell’s face. “This is-”

“The song you’ve been listening to on repeat while you moped around like a teenager getting up the courage to ask for a second date? Yes. I had Luc do a cover.” Rhy leaned over. “Hey! Holland! Do you know this song?”

Holland blinked, looking over at him. “No? Should I? It’s not really what I normally-”

“That’s great! Go dance with Kell, it’s his favorite!” Rhy grabbed Kell’s drink, tilting it up to his lips, and Kell drank the rest of it just to keep it from spilling out of his mouth. Then Rhy said softly, “Good luck, big brother, don’t fuck this up,” and shoved him into Holland.

Kell got himself a little distance, took a deep breath, and let the buzz from the drinks and the look on Holland’s face - almost a smile, almost almost almost - give him courage. “Do you- do you want to dance?”

Holland didn’t say anything, but he didn’t pull away when Kell pulled him out onto the floor. He was  _ exactly _ drunk enough not to talk himself out of it, and with two drinks downed faster than he should have, he was about to get rapidly drunker.

More drunk?

He couldn’t remember which one was right.

Luc began to sing, his voice deeper than anyone would have thought, smiling into the microphone. 

_ I am the son and the heir _

_ Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar _

_ I am the son and heir _

_ Of nothing in particular _

Luc, without his guitar in hand, never stopped moving on the stage, as though the bass had been an anchor and he had no moorings without it. The keyboardist crooned the backing vocals, her high soft voice a counterpoint to Luc’s whiskey-soaked tenor.

_ You shut your mouth,  _

_ How dare you say _

_ I go about things the wrong way _

_ I am human and I need to be loved _

_ Just like everybody else does _

“Is this really your favorite?” Holland asked into his ear. They were two entirely different versions of painfully awkward trying to dance with each other, but Kell was rapidly discovering he didn’t care any longer, because Holland was so  _ close  _ to him. He could  _ smell him.  _

Plus, you know, he was starting to be drunk, and either he had more rhythm than he thought or the alcohol was making him _ think  _ he did. He was starting to think it was fine either way.

“Kind of. I really like the Smiths!” 

“You  _ do? _ ”

“Is that bad?” He tilted his head, and realized that he didn’t really have to look up to look at Holland or look down like he did with nearly everyone else he knew. They were both tall, although Holland was more muscular, and they just looked right into each other’s eyes. 

“No, it’s…” Holland just trailed off. "You're surprising, Kell Maresh." The next couple of minutes were largely a blur of Luc’s voice, the guitars, Holland’s face too close to his, the perfect warmth of the alcohol, and the way that when he twisted his fingers into Holland’s shirt, he actually moved closer, until their foreheads were nearly touching and all it would have taken was half a second of courage.

Kell wasn’t _ that  _ drunk yet.

Luc sang another two songs, and then switched back to bass for the last three. When their set was over and the Danes came out, Holland stopped dancing. At first he didn’t move, the two of them still pressed together, just watching the stage. He could have kissed him. He could have. He probably should have tried.

He didn’t.

Kell saw Astrid Dane, the white-haired lead singer,  _ see  _ Holland in the crowd and raise her hand in a wave, smiling with a row of teeth that Kell thought looked like a shark’s. Then he saw Astrid’s eyes move to  _ him,  _ and Kell was moderately drunk, but something inside of him immediately told him he did  _ not  _ want to be the center of her attention.

Holland pulled away as though he’d been burned, turning to head back to the bar. Kell followed him, glancing once over his shoulder. Astrid waggled her fingers at him, then leaned over and said something to her twin brother, the lead guitarist, who looked exactly like her except for being male. He looked Kell’s way and waved, too.

“Hey,” Kell said, grabbing Holland by one arm. “You know them, don’t you? You know the Danes.”

Rhy overheard, still standing by the bar, and whistled. “He _ knows _ them? Shit. They have the  _ best drugs _ .”

“Yes, I know them.” Holland ordered another drink, this time going for enough straight bourbon in a glass to make Kell nervous in and of itself. This was a drink to get drunk on, not a drink to enjoy over time. 

“Hey,” Kell said softly, putting a hand on his arm. “If it’s a problem, we can just go somewhere else.”

“No,” Holland said tightly. “Now that they’ve seen me, we might as well stay. They’ll want to meet you. If I don’t stay, I’ll never hear the end of it. Let’s go sit at a table.” 

“Ah, okay, I. I, um-” Kell turned to look back at the bartender. Isra already had another drink ready, pushing it into his hand as Holland pulled him away. Rhy turned to greet Luc, who had appeared laughing, his bandmates just behind him. He grabbed Rhy around the shoulders and kissed him, and Rhy pushed him away, loudly complaining about how sweaty he was.

Kell was worried Holland would go silent, like he sometimes was at the coffeeshop, when the two of them would hardly be able to speak to each other. That they’d end up at the table and the night would ruin  _ itself,  _ and the dancing had been so  _ good,  _ he would be miserable if all the good stopped here.

Instead, Holland leaned over the table and, the Danes’ strange surreal off-kilter rock playing in the background, said with intensity, “You like the Smiths and a bunch of other bands from the 80’s and 90’s. You’re about to graduate with a degree in anthropology, but I think you took time off before you went to college. Your favorite food is Thai, but nobody at your house eats it, so you go out to eat by yourself. You were adopted, and you’re not thrilled about it. You had a tutor instead of going to school. Your favorite TV show is Brooklyn 99 and you loved my talk because you’re secretly into history but you don’t want people to know about it for some reason. You always get a caramel macchiato. There. That’s what I know about you.”

Kell blinked, took a sip of his drink, tried to let his mind catch up. Mostly, what he understood was that he loved the sound of Holland’s voice. “You’re older than me, but I don’t know by how much. You know the Danes, somehow. You went through some  _ shit  _ when you were younger, got your GED early, but you don’t like to talk about it. You love Swedish death metal bands I’ve never heard of and don’t understand but you just danced with me to the Smiths and I know I’m drunk but you’re a  _ really _ good dancer. You drink beer and whiskey, in that order. I have no idea what TV shows you like but I know you only drink coffee black.” He took another long drink, let the alcohol settle into his bones, and then said quickly, before he lost the courage, “Also I think you look amazing in everything you wear and you make me stupid.”

Holland sat back, blinking at him. “I do what?”

“Every time I’m around you I feel like I only have two brain cells and both of them got lost. I have no idea why you keep talking to me.”

Holland blinked, once. Then he leaned over his drink for a second, running a hand back through his hair, and Kell realized he was smiling. “I talk to you because you make  _ me  _ stupid,” He said, finally. “No one’s ever made me stupid.”

Kell’s breath caught in his throat. “I make you stupid?” 

“You have no idea. You have no idea how fucking stupid you make me. It’s, uh. It’s pretty great.”

“Um.” Oh, he was drunk. Oh, he had done this too fast. He wasn’t exactly a lightweight, but… “I like you.”

Holland snorted. “Yeah, I know.” There was a pause, and then he looked off towards the stage, watching the Danes. Astrid moved like a snake while she sang, and Kell watched her for a second, too, wondering for someone so short and skinny could look like she could kill everyone in the room with one of her shoes and no regrets. 

Kell tapped his fingers nervously on the table, then said slowly, “So do you-”

“Yes,” Holland said without looking at him. 

After that, the talking came easier. They sat through the Danes’ set, just talking to each other, filling in the gaps of things they didn’t know. They ended up getting so wrapped up in it they didn’t notice when the Danes’ set ended and the bar went back to music over the speakers..

At least, not until a pale hand with blood-red fingernails dropped onto Holland’s shoulder. “Holland!” Astrid up close was even more unnerving than she had been safely far away on the stage. Kell had seen them perform before; Luc opened for them all the time, and they were basically famous in this part of the state. But he’d never been this close to them before. Astrid’s voice was deeper than he would have expected for a woman, melodic, just a little rough from years of smoking. “Who’s your friend?”

“Yeah,” A deeper male voice said from just behind him. Kell jumped, turning around to crane his head up at Astrid’s twin brother. He hadn’t even heard him come up. “Who’s this?”

Holland swallowed, something in his jaw gone a little tight. “This is Kell Maresh.”

“Maresh,” The brother said distantly. “I know that name. Why do I know that name? Why does this little guy look familiar?”

“He’s three inches taller than  _ you _ ,” Holland said defensively.

“Luc’s boyfriend,” Astrid said with a sudden, and sort of terrifying, brightness in her eyes. “You’re  _ Rhy’s _ brother! We’ve heard so much about you. Do you party?”

“Luc talks about you _ all the time _ when he’s high.”

“Does he  _ ever _ .”

“I expected you to be more annoying, but you’re kind of cute, aren’t you?” Athos grinned down at him, and one of his teeth was metal and glinted in the dim light. Kell hadn’t even known you could still  _ get _ a metal fake tooth.

“I’m Astrid Dane,” She said, holding one hand out. Kell shook it, feeling a little bit like he was being pushed off a cliff and just hadn’t noticed he was falling yet. “Holland’s our stepbrother.”

Kell blinked, looking over at him. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t share much. Our mother married his father.”

“Yep,” Athos piped up, picking Kell’s drink up and taking a sip, then making a face. “Shit, that’s sweet. Gross. Here, drink the rest.”

“Uh, I was hoping to take my time with-”

“Drink. The. Rest.”

Kell nodded.

“You don’t have to,” Holland said, moving around to get between the two of them.    


“Yeah he does,” Athos said, “Or we’ll keep talking to him all night. Drink it, Kell Maresh.”

Kell did as he was told, and when Holland got close enough he shifted against him, wondering how he could be in public, in plain view of more than two hundred people, and still feel like a deer caught in a truck’s headlights. 

“Yeah,” Athos continued, brightening now that Kell had followed orders, “We’re stepsiblings. Holland’s dad married our mom shortly before they both disappeared mysteriously.”

Holland rolled his eyes, leaning over to say into Kell’s ear, “They moved to Florida. Let’s go, Kell.” He went to walk past them, and Astrid put one red-nailed hand on his chest. 

“Oh, don’t take him away so fast, we haven’t even gotten to know him yet! You should come back to our place.” Astrid smiled at him, and somehow her smile was worse than any frown could ever be. There were alarm bells ringing in Kell’s head, but it would be really… really impolite to just ignore an invitation, right? “You’d get to see Holland’s room and you could _ party  _ with us.”

“I could see Holland’s room?” He asked, aware he had probably just put his foot in a bear trap.

“Yes!” Astrid said with delight. “His room is so gloomy and awful, you’ll love it.”

“We have drugs,” Athos added helpfully. “Holland never does them, but you could.”

“I don’t… really do-”

“What better time to start? We could just give you some ecstasy.” She winked at Holland. “Little E to start the evening?”

“Absolutely not,” Holland said firmly. “You can’t just start making him try  _ drugs _ , Astrid, he’s-”

“Oh, I’ve done ecstasy before,” Kell said, aware that his words were a little slurred from drinking, but the words just sort of tumbled out before he could stop them. “Like five or six times.”

“You have?” Astrid’s eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline. 

“Yeah, with Rhy and Luc.”

“You  _ have? _ ” Holland asked, and Kell shrugged, hands in the air in a  _ what are you gonna do?  _ gesture. The bar seemed a little spinnier than normal, didn’t it? 

“It wasn’t so bad. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Astrid looked like a kid on Christmas morning. “You are _ officially  _ the most interesting person Holland has ever dated.”

“We’re not  _ dating, _ ” Holland snapped, then glanced at Kell. “Well, I guess we are.”

“No, you don’t have to say-” 

“No,” Holland cut him off, and the sound of his voice was so  _ fucking cool.  _ Kell was almost angry at him for it. How were you supposed to  _ not  _ have a giant crush on someone with a voice like that? “We’re definitely dating, as long as you think we are, too. I’m just kind of an asshole around them. Let’s go, Kell.” 

“But we want to talk to him some more,” Athos said, putting a hand on Kell’s shoulder.

“We always want to meet your friends,” Astrid said, her voice dropping into something softer. “Bring him back to our place, he seems fun. Besides, you might like what happens after that, you know, Hol? Maybe he’ll want to stay over.”

“Maybe he never leaves,” Athos piped up.

“We’re done,” Holland said, taking Athos’s hand off Kell’s shoulder. “I’m taking him back to _ his  _ house. You two can go be serial killers in the making on your own.”

Astrid snorted. “Fair enough, have it your way. Nice to meet you, Kell. Hope to see you again.” She looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Luc!”

Luc looked up from where he’d been focused somewhere in the vicinity of Rhy’s neck. “Yeah?”

“You want to come back to our place?”

Luc grinned. “Yeah! Hey, Rhy-”

“Way ahead of you,” Rhy said, slamming his ridiculous tropical drink down on the bar. 

“Fuck, yeah, can I come?” That was the keyboardist, Delilah Bard, the girl Kell had sort of been in love with. She pulled a knife out of somewhere - Kell was never sure where she kept them, they just sort of appeared - and flipped it in her hand. “You guys do the good drugs. You want to get super high and cut some stuff up?”

“Oh my God,” Athos Dane said out loud. His voice shook a little. “Can I marry you and have your children?”

Lila grinned at him, a smile that was not quite a snarl. “Let’s try sitting in the same room for twenty minutes first, yeah?”

Rhy rolled his eyes, then leaned over. “Kell, no worries, I’ll call you an Uber. I’m going to ride with Luc and the band.”

“He doesn’t need one,” Holland said, a hand on his back. “I’ll take him.” 

Rhy hesitated. “Kell? Just want to know you’re sure, okay?”

“It’s okay,” Kell said, aware that the bar was definitely a lot spinnier than it should be now, and simultaneously aware that he did not particularly mind. “I can show him where the house is.”

Rhy grinned,  _ winked at him,  _ winked at him in  _ plain sight the absolute asshole,  _ and Holland gently steered Kell by the hand on his back out the door.

They made it outside and most of the way down the block before Holland stopped. “So there’s one problem with my brilliant ‘drive you home’ plan. I am  _ way _ too drunk to drive.”

“Oh,” Kell said. The night air was freezing cold but he felt sort of warm still from the liquor. Since most of the streetlights were out, you could actually see the stars in this part of town. A few of the brightest ones, anyway. He let his head tip back to look up at them, squinting a little. “You don’t seem drunk.”

“Well, I am.”

“I have news for you.”

“What?”

Kell grinned. “I’m pretty drunk, too.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Want to go somewhere? Or go sit in my car, or…”

“Let’s go sit in your car,” Kell said to the sky. 

Which was how he ended up sitting in the passenger seat of a beat-up four-door in a nearly-empty parking lot with Holland fucking Vosijk, the two of them almost silent, trying to sober up. 

_ Oh, I'm stupid AND drunk now. _

Some of Holland's screamy metal music was playing softly over the speakers, and Kell closed his eyes, the world shifting around him.

"So, I, uh. I don't want to kiss you."

Kell's eyes flew open and he blinked over at him, trying to figure out if he'd heard right. "Um. Okay? I'm sorry, did I do something wrong?"

"No, wait, let me finish. I don't want to kiss you because we're both trashed and I don't want it to be because of that. I've… had fucked up relationships before. I don't want this to be that."

"Oh." Kell thought about that, and it took longer than it should have. Even the screamy music was kind of lulling him, growing on him, the words he didn’t understand running together. “Do you even speak Swedish?”

Holland blinked. “What?”

“You listen to Swedish music. Do you even speak it?”

“Yeah,” Holland said, leaning back in his seat, looking ahead of himself. “Not… not like I lived there or anything, but I learned back when my dad met the Danes’ mom.”

“That’s really fucking cool.” Kell closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the seat’s headrest. “You’re so fucking cool.”

“I’m really not.”

There was a beat of silence. Then, speaking with all the courage that too much booze could give him, Kell said, without opening his eyes, “What if _ I _ want to kiss  _ you? _ ”

“What?”

"You said you don’t want to kiss me, but what if it were my idea?”

“Um.” Another beat of silence. Kell opened his eyes to discover, to his mixed delight and horror, that Holland fucking Vosijk was  _ blushing.  _ “I- I guess-”

Kell didn’t wait.

It felt like jumping off a tall building and hoping he hit water instead of ground. It felt like taking a risk, like Holland could rip part of him out if he wanted to, but that it was okay if he was the one to do the tearing. It felt like going under the water with his hands out and hoping he didn’t drown, that someone would pull him back up.

He leaned over, elbow on the console between them, turned Holland’s face to his, and kissed him.

Holland tasted like beer and whiskey and his skin was a little cold even with the heater running in the car. His mouth was softer than Kell had expected, and he pushed against him a little more, feeling Holland’s mouth open for his, a hint of stubble on his chin. He could hear his own heart beating, pounding in his chest, and when he put a hand up to Holland's chest he could feel his heart beating through his shirt, too.

Kell pulled back, trying on a lopsided smile, feeling a sudden flash of terror. Stupid, so _ stupid _ , Holland probably thought-

“Can I try something?” Kell asked softly. _Now or never, Maresh. _“Something I wanted to do earlier?”

“Um.” Holland’s voice was hoarse again, and he loved that voice, the way it sounded, so deep and warm. “Sure. I guess. What?”

Kell smiled, reached up, and gently slid his glasses off his face, folding them and laying them on the dash before looking back at him.

“Shit,” He said softly.

“What?” 

“Your eyes are really fucking green, did you know that?”

“Yes.” Holland swallowed. “Yours are really blue. I think about your eyes a lot.”

_ Am I too drunk, or just drunk enough? _

“I think my last brain cell just died,” Kell said softly. “Did you just talk about my eyes?”

Holland’s green eyes were wide, and it was dark in the parking lot, and it was just the two of them in this beat-up little car with someone screaming in a whisper on the radio and the sound of Holland’s breathing loud enough to hear. 

God, he loved the sound of Holland breathing.

“Hey, Holland, can I… can I kiss you again?”

Holland looked right in his eyes, right at him - he was in a car kissing Holland fucking  _ Vosijk  _ \- and said, “Yes.” **  
**


	6. As Long as Rhy Climbs (Day 6: Kids)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was 'kids', so have Rhy and Kell climbing a tree. The sugary sweetness kills me.

“Kell,” Rhy said, with all the royal dignity an eight-year-old prince could muster, “I want to climb _ high _ today. _ Really _high. I want to go all the way up to the top!”

Kell nodded, not saying anything, but with Rhy around he usually didn’t have to. He might be older, but he never felt it; Rhy was all the light and life in the world, and Kell was the shadow that trailed behind him. Taller, maybe, always taller - but still just a shadow.

He liked it that way. He _ liked _ being Rhy’s shadow, and he wanted to be his shadow forever. Rhy was his brother, and he was really good, but also he was _ fun. _ Rhy had the best ideas for games, and he never minded that Kell was quiet; he could talk enough for both of them, and usually did. 

“Help me up,” Rhy commanded imperiously. Kell rolled his eyes at that; Rhy’s manners tended to come and go based on whether or not he was distracted, and sometimes he forgot politeness with Kell entirely.

Who was ever polite to their _ brother _, though, really? 

Rhy looked back at him. Then, with a shame-faced smile, he said, “Help me up, _ please?” _

Kell grinned at him, all annoyance forgiven, and linked his fingers to give Rhy a stepping-stone up. He managed to get his fingers into the hollow, pulled himself the rest of the way, standing up and looking back down at Kell with his hands on his hips, the knees of his pants only slightly smeared with dirt. “Pretty good, right?”

Kell nodded, smiling back at him. 

Kell did not smile all that much; at least, grown-ups were always telling him he didn’t smile enough, and he supposed grown-ups would know. It didn’t come easily to him. He was never sure when the timing was right for it. 

With Rhy, though, there was never a bad time to smile.

Rhy hunted around, trying to find something to grab onto to pull himself higher, eventually falling back with a frown. “Kell, there are no good spots here. Make me a good one, I want to climb really high today.” 

Kell squinted up into the tree, thinking, and then let his hands move in a sort of dance in front of him, murmuring the words. It didn’t take long before he felt it, the welcome stir of the magic in his blood.

There was magic in him he would have to bleed out, but this wasn’t it. Instead, this was the simplest kind of earth magic, and the magic in the tree recognized the magic in him. This was simple stuff, really; all he did was ask a branch to grow where he needed it, and grow it did.

Rhy grinned fiercely, grabbing on to the brand new handhold, pulling himself up.

Sometimes there were branches already there, and then Kell just watched, but more often than not Rhy needed a climbing branch made for him, and Kell kept himself focused and steady, pulling them out of the form of the tree one by one, letting Rhy climb higher and higher.

Kell’s feet never left the ground. Someone needed to be ready to create a place for Rhy to fall if he lost his grip or his balance. Someone needed to catch him. But here, with his magic building tree branches from thin air and a bit of bark, Kell could help Rhy climb higher.

When Rhy had gone as far as he could go, he stood staring down over the gardens with wide, awe-filled eyes, a brilliant smile on his face. He looked down and shouted, “This is great! Do you want to come up?”

“Rhy?” Emira’s voice was a shattered piece of glass, and Kell spun around to find her standing with her hands over her mouth, staring horrified up at her only son. “Get down from there! You’ll get hurt!”

“Kell helped me climb the tree!”

“I can see that Rhy, now get down!” Emira glared at him, and Kell flinched away. After a second, he saw her expression soften; she knew as well as anyone how hard it was to tell Rhy no. “Kell, don’t help him with things like this, you know better.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kell said softly. “Sorry, ma’am.”

She shook her head, but he could see the smile at the corner of her mouth. Emira always forgave him, in the end. She wasn’t so bad, as far as not-quite-moms went. Even if lately she’d stopped coming to his room when he had nightmares, told him he was too old to need someone with him.

That was okay. Rhy came instead.

“Kell!” Rhy put his arms out, balancing precariously on a thin branch. “Catch me!” 

He jumped out of the tree.

Emira’s scream for him to stop was a half-second too late, and it hung in the air along with the hands she’d thrown out as though she could stop it as Rhy fell. She looked frantically around for something she could use her own powers on, but Kell had already stepped forward, closed his eyes, and called to the tree.

Wood twisted and warped under his will, branches twining together at lightning speed, forming a sort of curved half-circle, catching Rhy so he slid the rest of the way down a slide made of living bark and leaves, hands in the air and laughing breathlessly, tumbling to the ground unhurt, black hair tousled into his face.

“Mama! Kell caught me! Look! Look how Kell caught me!”

Kell, proud of himself, turned to see if Emira had seen what he had done.

She was staring at him, with something like horror mixed with awe. Then she turned and walked quickly away.

That was okay.

What mattered - what was always going to matter - was Rhy.

“Let’s do that again!” Rhy shouted, and turned right back around. “Help me back up into the tree, Kell! You come too this time!”

Kell only shook his head.

Someone had to stay down on the ground, and Kell was happy as long as Rhy was the one to climb.


	7. She is Murder (Day 7: Sports)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our 2nd look into the lives of Astrid and Athos Dane: Serial Killers on a Road Trip and Holland, their captive along for the ride. 
> 
> TW: for implied/referenced assault/abuse, TW for darkness, just... TW

“There are trophies with our names on it back at a high school somewhere,” Astrid said, popping open the trunk of the little four-door Ford something-or-other they’d switched up the minivan for somewhere around the border between Indiana and Illinois, right when the little bursts of trees had given way to flatlands and a sky that stretched like a wide blue bowl above their heads, no beginning and no end, amen.

The was trunk nice and spacious (“big enough for three or four bodies”, Athos had said with a laugh) and Astrid had plenty of room for everything she needed.

There were three duffel bags full of their clothing and things like toothbrushes and razorblades, the supply bag for when Athos got the itch, one small tote bag with some books Holland had picked up to read along the way, and an archery set. 

Astrid would never have left without it. It was the last thing they'd kept from home, when home had stopped being the place they went to see their mother and had become just walls and a front door and no feelings at all.

“Astrid’s name, mostly,” Athos said, drinking coffee out of a ridiculous travel mug decorated with unicorns that he absolutely refused to part with. The barista they'd ordered from back in Indianapolis had looked at it, then up at the towering, hulking man before her, and had not said a single word about it.

Smart girl. Astrid would have made her regret it if she had.

“Don’t be so modest,” Astrid said to him, smiling over her shoulder. "You were a great shot, too, they just didn't have a Hunting Club, did they?"

"I'm _ really _ good with hunting, I'd definitely have gotten more trophies if they had. Mother took us deer hunting all the time."

_ When he gets the itch, you must help him, or I fear we'll lose him, Astrid. _

_ Yes, Mama. _

_ You must take care of him. His darkness goes so deep. You must help him to be happy. _

_ Always, Mama. _

_ Deer will not be enough one day, Astrid. _

_ I know, Mama. _

By the time they'd had that conversation, deer were already not enough.

She would never lose Athos or allow him to be sad. Her brother was not perfect, but he didn’t have to be; he was hers, and she had spent her life with his voice in her ear, with him standing by her side. They belonged together, a matched set of white-blond hair and blue eyes, long limbs and - always and - the itch.

Astrid felt it rarely. Athos felt it more.

_ He will never know how to love, Astrid. You must protect the people he will seek out, because he cannot love them. _

Mother hadn't known everything. Athos loved just like anyone. Maybe he loved even more, more deeply, more thoroughly. She has to protect Athos from those who might leave him.

She would never let her twin be hurt. Never. If he was hurt, so was she. They shared everything, they shared the world as though they ruled it.

Sometimes she woke up from nightmares and reached out across Holland, who always slept like the dead once Athos allowed him to sleep, to find her twin already up, grabbing onto her hand, whispering, _ I saw it, too, Astrid. I saw it, too. _

They shared the itch, sometimes, too. They had to find bodies when they felt the itch - bodies moving and walking and breathing when they had no right to any of those things at all.

Out here, in the center of fields that swayed with gently rustling cornstalks taller than their heads and the sky she sometimes thought would shatter from its own vast weight, she hadn't felt the itch at all. Neither had Athos; Holland kept him happy these days, when the sky was bright and beautiful above them.

She liked it here.

"What were your trophies for?" Holland asked, sitting on the ground with his back leaning against the back driver's side tire, sipping his own coffee from a thermos be held awkwardly in his left hand, right hand laying a little limply in his lap. He looked up at her, calm and placid today, although he was like that some mornings, when he tried to make the best of it. 

His shirt had been one of Athos's many gifts, he had bought him a dozen or more shirts by now, and it was a dark red with _ Someone in Ohio Loves Me _written in white across the front. His jeans had rips at the knees, although they hadn't started that way - he'd earned those over time. He was wearing his sunglasses, always.

Athos brightened at his interest. Astrid wondered if Holland understood that her brother's love was the only reason he was still alive.

Athos loved so purely, and he loved Holland, so she loved him, too.

They had always shared everything. 

"Archery," Astrid said, as she pulled the bow case out, lifting it carefully. It looked like an odd, very long gray duffel bag, but as she set it on the ground and opened it up, her bow gleamed up at her in the sun, wood smooth and a beautiful Osage orangewood, settled in protective cloth, in little hollows built just for it. She smiled, taking it out with reverence, looking it over with her head tilted. "Our mother bought us matching sets when we turned four."

"They had little fuzzy balls on the end and stuck into Velcro in the target," Athos added helpfully, watching Astrid as she began to string it. "We started taking lessons two years later." After a second, he stood, moving to pull the target out of the trunk, hauling it out like a body over to a tree and setting it up so it stood.

She'd drawn a smiling face on its blank cloth front a long time ago. The face was faded, now. 

They'd had the target a long time, since Craig broke up with her in tenth grade.

When the itch came, Astrid always saw the target in the bodies they returned to the ground where they belonged. She always saw Craig, who had been so surprised to find that he would never leave her.

_ He should have known that Athos would not let him go once I cried. _

"I killed my first deer with a bow when I was thirteen," Astrid said thoughtfully. "I could have before. I just wanted it to be special."

"I was thirteen, too," Athos said. "With a bow."

"I've never been hunting," Holland said, mildly enough. She wondered what he was thinking, behind those dark sunglasses. She could have hurt him until he told her, of course, but he had been so sweet today, and Athos never wanted to hurt him too badly when he was sweet. He'd let Athos hold his hand in the coffeeshop, hadn't tried to pull away.

Even Holland could learn.

_ He will kill people one day, Astrid. You must be there to help him. _

Is this what their mother had meant? She never knew. She never asked.

"Do you want to try it?" Athos asked, a little shyly. Astrid watched him pull the arrows from the trunk, too, a set she'd picked up somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Holland looked away, over to the cornfields that stretched away from them in every direction. She saw it, then; the little frown. His fear. She trusted that more than she would ever trust his sweetness. "No," he said, and his voice was softer.

"In any case, my name is on a trophy back home. So is my brother's. We were the archery club's star members." Athos handed her an arrow and she tested the bow, first. Astrid is always careful, methodical. She takes her time. She had cleaned and prepped the bow this morning in the hotel parking lot while she waited for Athos and Holland to be ready to leave.

Drawing the bow is a motion as familiar as her hand around Holland's throat at night. Looking at the target and taking aim feels like when she watches him with Athos, thinking of the ways that she will bleed him when her brother's infatuation finally passes.

But perhaps it won't. Athos has never loved anyone the way he loves Holland. No one has ever suffered for them like him.

Astrid does not believe in fate, or soulmates, but she knows Athos does.

"I could teach you," Astrid said, her voice slightly tight with the effort of the draw, feeling the muscles in her arms stretched and pulled, a motion familiar as breathing.

She let it fly.

The target _ whumped _softly as the arrow buried itself right through its narrow throat.

"Fuck you, Craig," She said out loud, and laughed. Craig stared back at her, and there was blood on his throat, and she remembered Athos laughing that night, laughing and laughing, and Craig was her first body, but he was Athos's third.

_ He cannot love, Astrid. _

_ No, Mama, _ she thought. _ Athos loves so much, he loves Holland between us and alone with him, he loves him arguing for their lives or silent in the car while we deal with the bodies. He loves him screaming and crying and laughing. Oh, Mama, when he laughs Athos smiles so much. _

_ You were wrong, Mama. I'm the one who cannot love. _

That was okay. Athos could love, and she would love through him, and it was all okay. Athos was ugly in different ways than her, but beautiful like her, too.

_ He can never leave us. Athos cannot lose him. I will hold it all together. _

Holland looked up at her and she looked back, as she takes the second arrow from her brother's outstretched hand. She wondered what he was thinking behind the twin mirrored reflections in his glasses.

Craig was not really Craig. He was just canvas stuffed with cloth, with a drawn-on smile. But he looked like Craig, sometimes. The way he looked at the end, when Astrid took out her knife and made him smile one more time.

"Have you ever gone back to see the trophies?" Holland asked. She was pleased with him - he didn't normally want to talk, this was a pleasant surprise. 

"No," Athos said, laying the rest of the arrows out on the bow case and moving to sit down next to him. Holland goes very still as Athos settles, their arms touching, and Astrid can see him swallow. "They took the trophies out of the case."

When Athos twined his fingers around the bent fingers on Holland's right hand, he didn't pull away. 

He hadn't pulled away last night, either. Perhaps he was learning.

"Why did they take the trophies out of the case?" Holland asked. The silver earring in his right ear flashed in the sun. 

Astrid took aim. She held it just long enough that her arm began to burn, and let it fly.

"Fuck you, Craig," She said again, and laughed harder this time, as the arrow _ thumped _in over his heart.

"Because of what happened to Craig," Athos answered, and pointed at the target. "Craig tried to leave."

Astrid turned back to pick up the next arrow, and this time she saw Holland try to close his damaged right hand around her brother's fingers, try to hold on to Athos a little tighter.

_ Smart, _Astrid thought. 

She could not love anyone but Athos, but that was fine. They were two halves of one person and Athos loved enough for both of them.

_He loves you so much, and the day he stops is the day you become a body._


	8. The Cyborg in the Three-Piece Suit (Day 8: Color)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Day 8: Colors, I chose to do a bit of cyberpunk/cyborg sci-fi funtimes with Luc. Inspired by a pink by pinkcupboardwitch, linked below

Alucard Emery color-codes the functions of his neural implants. Red was always the color of love, and white is the color for fear.

He hasn’t used red in nearly four years, but white is always on his mind. In a place like this, you always keep the twins in your line of sight, and keep yourself out of theirs. His alarms are coded just for their mercenaries. They should have been flashing white for the Danes in warning long before his door flung open and bashed into the wall with a crash, but none of them went off until it was already too late. 

By the time he stood, he could already feel it - a high-pitched ring of sound like a machine’s scream inside his mind, the worm burrowing into his neurals, knocking them out of commission one by one. 

They call it magic, in the tunnels, because no one but the _ Antari _-class cyborgs can do this.

His alarms start flashing white as they dump adrenaline into his veins and Alucard thinks_ thanks for the heads-up _, just before the man in the perfect gray suit steps in through his front door and the ringing sound becomes the shriek of metal grinding against metal, and Luc falls to his knees.

He doesn't know how the Danelaw found him. He’s been dodging them all through the Sea and the White ever since he left the Red in the first place. The Danelaw wants his skills, and he knows it, but he’d never worried too much about them.

You just stay two steps ahead of the twins, that’s all, and he was sure his crew was too small to catch their notice. 

He’s kept his nose mostly clean in the Sea - cleaner than most of the pirates, anyway - and stayed low to the ground. The Danelaw shouldn’t have known where he was. Even if they’d started asking around, he’d paid more than a few bribes to ensure he’d be informed. 

They shouldn’t have known about this place.

What they _ should _ know doesn’t matter, of course, because their _ Antari _walked right in the front door, looking down at Luc where he knelt with an empty face full of horrifying, impossible nothing. 

Luc’s neurals are firing on all cylinders trying to keep Holland out of his mind, but it’s too late; the worm is in, and he is losing, and he can’t get up off his knees. 

At first glance, Holland is human, but Luc knows better. Holland is tall, taller than he should be, and his face is impossibly handsome and cold. Luc can still kind of see the man, in him, underneath everything the Danes have put in (or taken out) of him since.

The black hair is probably original. He probably still bleeds red. But that gray three-piece suit shimmers under the lights with the signals the twins must be sending, and the black gloves that cover his hands are probably to hide the fact that he doesn’t need skin for them any longer.

“Knock, knock,” Holland says without emotion, in a voice that is slightly off, a little mechanical. His vocal chords must have been replaced - _ what possible use _ , Luc thinks desperately, _ could even the twins have for that kind of operation? Had it just been to see if he would survive it? _

“You’re not authorized to enter-” Luc’s implants burst in little pops of agony inside his head and he falls to the ground, the pistol clattering out of his hand, useless. Holland steps carefully over to him, tilts his head to look down, and then kicks him with all the force of the metal foot inside his custom-made black leather shoes. 

Luc gasped, struggling for breath, sending the kill code for his ongoing connections to his crew as fast as he can, just barely staying ahead of Holland's terrible intrusion. 

At some point he begins to cry for help, even though in the Sea everyone knows better than to help anyone else and none of his networks are connected any longer.

He stares up in horror as the _ Antari _ smiles, dusting off his suitjacket, a flash of perfectly straight white teeth. One of his eyes is still human, green and with a dilated pupil that tells Luc the stim program is probably running. The other is pure black, and he can hear it _ whirring _softly with machinery.

"I am programmed," Holland says with terrible calm, "to smile when you scream. I am programmed to smile."

The pops begin again, as Holland’s little trick tears his implants apart inside his skull. The pain is impossible, and he screams for it to stop, and Holland smiles and smiles and smiles.

Luc color-codes everyone he comes in contact with, but he’s never met Holland before, and he is no color at all. The _ Antari _cyborgs are rare. Maresh Corp has one, guarding their pure human son, born a baby like everyone else but rebuilt as a single-minded guardian for Rhy. The Danelaw has one, the man-machine looking down at him now with that awful rictus grin that never reaches his eyes.

Luc has an _ Antari _ cyborg, too - but that's his little secret, and she isn't here to save him now.

"Alucard Emery, you have been ignoring my employer’s messages.” Holland kicked him again, barking out a harsh, humorless laugh. Alarms are ringing as every enhancement cuts out one by one, leaving him in the dark, just a man with useless wires under his skin. Just a man. Just a beating heart, and beating hearts can be stilled so easily.

Just a pirate, and a pirate’s life is worth nothing in the Sea, not if the Danelaw Group wants you gone. 

Luc scrambles away from him, groaning at the pain blooming along his ribcage, wishing he’d replaced them a few years ago when the special metal ribcages had been all the rage.

“My crew doesn’t work for the twins,” Luc says, hoarsely, putting his hands up in some kind of supplication. The blue stone above his left eye is recording, he knows that - it glints in the light like a sapphire but it’s recording everything he sees, feels - hooked right into the neural feed, but with a separate, private connection.

He starts composing a message, frantically, trying to keep away from Holland, who moves towards him slowly, stretching the hands inside his black leather gloves. He looks like he belongs in the Red, with the corporations, guarding their precious sons and daughters. He looks like he belongs anywhere but here in the Sea. 

They told stories about Holland, here.

They said he’d been a mercenary, once, only a couple of the cheaper implants but his muscles and his height had made him decent at the work. He’d bought _ Antari _enhancements, and while he was undergoing the procedure, the twins had stormed the shop and simply taken him away. 

They said the twins who ran the Danelaw Group had spent three years with him locked away somewhere, experimenting, and when he left he was wearing a three-piece suit and very little skin.

They said the twins shared him, that they’d had enhancements added to him for that purpose, too, but those rumors had always struck Alucard as the gossip spread by idle mouths with no money for food and less for entertainment. If you couldn’t afford stims or vids, you made up stories about the people who could. 

They said his stimulant programs ran nonstop, controlled by Athos or Astrid, depending on the day and who felt like holding down the switch. They said that he adored them, when they made him, and hated them when they didn’t.

The stories about him were why Luc never answered the call for the Danelaw, why he had coded them white and told his alarms to dump fear in him if he ever considered it. They were why he kept the kill codes ready so they couldn’t find Stross, or Lila, or any of the crew.

Lila was the most at risk. Lila was his secret, his _ Antari _cyborg pirate hiding in plain sight. If she was smart, she’d read the kill code for what it was and run to the purity priests, to Hastra, for sanctuary. They’d never look for her in the temples to those who refused enhancement.

Stross could hide with his people, who wore green for the saints they worshipped, the saints of the world that people like the Maresh Corp and the Danelaw Group had blasted and poisoned and dug up until it was red, and white, and gray, and black.

Black the part of the city dead and gone, poisoned with factories and experiments and bombs. Gray for the purity temples and the people who turned enhancement away. Red for Maresh Corp and the rest of the mega-corporations, in their skyscrapers, with their children safely locked away from the chaos down below.

White for the wasteland city, where the Danes ruled.

The Sea the thread that connected them all, the two-mile-wide stretch of no man’s land that wound like a snake around the perimeter, touching every part of the city in turn. 

It had seemed safe, once upon a time. It was safe, until the Danes saw you. Until you got good enough at what you did to get their attention. 

“Your crew doesn’t,” Holland says. He stops walking across the floor, simply stands there, his black eye making a low humming noise as it sends visual input back, no doubt, right back to the twins. “You do, now. You have a reputation. My employers wish to utilize it.”

“You’ve got better hackers than me working for you,” Luc says. His piercing is recording his message, but it’s not done yet, he needs more time. Rhy can’t use enhancements; they’ve never worked. He’ll have to send the message to KL and hope the cyborg lets him see it.

“Your skills are considerable, but that is not why they want you.” Holland flexes his right hand, opening the fingers and then slowly closing them again. His pupil seems to go just a bit wider, and Luc swallows, hard.

Remote stims like what he can see running behind Holland’s black eye now are illegal everywhere but the White. Remote stims can be used to control, to communicate, to compel. He doesn’t know what Holland is about to be compelled to do, but it can’t be anything good.

“They have no reason to want me, if not for that,” Luc says, but his voice is weak, and they know. They know, they know, they know.

The official story for why he was kicked out of the Red was piracy, of course, but there was more. Secrets kept between he and-

“My employers know,” Holland says carefully, looking around the dingy little apartment Luc shares with Lila and Stross in the Spire, the piles of wires gently gleaming, flashing little lights, the hint of grime on everything but the computers they use to pirate information, access, resources. They sleep on mats on the floor that they move to a closet during the day, to give themselves more room to work. “They know about you and Rhy Maresh.”

Luc’s heart drops. 

Three years, he’d kept his secret, and Holland says it as though it’s no secret at all.

“You slept with him for two years,” Holland says, rattling the facts off distantly as his programs feed the information to him straight from Luc’s memory banks. “You said ‘I love you’ for the first time in bed with him four months after your first kiss, and he thought you just said it because you were enjoying yourself so much, you had to say it again later before he believed you.”

“Stop,” Luc said hoarsely. “That’s _ private. _”

“No,” Holland replies, a little sadly. “It’s theirs, now. They will make you show them your memories. They consume it like vids. They are tired of mine. I’m sorry.” The cyborg’s voice is empty. There is no sign in his expression as to whether or not the phrase is sincere. “Ah. Your father discovered you sleeping with a rival corporation’s heir, and a purity at that, and you were kicked out into the Sea. These are all accurate memories? You haven’t overwritten them with any programming?”

The worm burrows deep, and he feels the pain between his shoulder blades as messages are sent down his spine. “No,” Luc ground out against his will, Rhy’s face still burning into his retinas even though his eyes were closed. “No. I kept these. These are mine.”

He’d locked the memories of Rhy up behind passcodes but Holland’s virus cracked them open, and the memories come spilling out in a rush as Holland sends them straight to the Danelaw Group to be processed. Luc’s eyelids flutter, his visuals are totally overridden with Rhy’s face.

Rhy laughing, Rhy smiling, Rhy flushed in bed with desire, Rhy’s mouth on his, the tears when he’d left him, the fury on his cyborg bodyguard’s face, programmed to protect Rhy from every injury, taking it a little too far into the realm of emotional hurt, too.

_ I had to go. They made me leave. _

Holland nearly finds the message that he’s still trying to finish, but Luc set that connection apart for a reason. He just needs more time. Just a little more time…

“You will help us access Maresh Corporation resources,” Holland says firmly, the mechanical half of his voice stronger than the human for now. “I wish I could say you are being offered a job, but you are being offered survival. Cooperate and survive. Choose not to, and I am to send parts of you to Rhy Maresh until _ he _cooperates.”

“What resources? I haven’t had Maresh codes since-”

“You don’t need codes,” Holland says softly, with a catch in his throat. There is a flush to his skin that tells Luc the twins must be pleased, they’ve increased his stimulant. The red in his face means he still bleeds red. The way his mouth goes slightly slack tells him that there is enough man left under that perfect, impeccably tailored suit to feel pleasure when the stim tells him to. “You’re Alucard Emery, and you are famous for piracy. Stand up.”

Luc doesn’t tell his legs to stand, but they do anyway. The worm in his mind that Holland controls fires neurons as needed and his muscles respond to the messages. So much is shut down. The constant feed of information he lives by has gone silent. He can no longer see the connections in his visual input. He can no longer see anything but what is right in front of him; a black-haired man in a suit, with black gloves over fingers that may not even be real.

The only program still running is the piercing above his eyebrow. He finishes his message, records a final _ I love you, Rhy _, and then feels the soft, gentle ‘click’ inside his thoughts as the message sends.

_ Please, KL _ , he thinks, _ please let him see it. Don’t hide this from him. _

Holland cocks his head, the motion strangely birdlike for such a broad-shouldered, tall man. “What did I just feel?”

Luc closes his eyes, reaches up, and yanks the piercing out, hissing at the flash of pain, drops it to the floor, and grinds it into so much dust underneath his heel. “Goodbye. I said goodbye.”

“You will see him again,” Holland says, and there is a hint of feeling there, as if a man still lives beneath all the metal and wires. Luc looks up and meets his eyes. “We will walk right into Maresh Corp together to retrieve him when the time is right. Come; you have a job interview with the Danelaw scheduled.”

“My neurals are all down. I can’t do the work without them.”

Holland snorts, and it’s the most human thing he’s done so far. When he gestures, his arm out for Luc to walk ahead of him, there is no way to refuse. The little worm-shaped virus in his mind spurs him on. “Please rest assured that your neurals being damaged is not a concern for my employers.”

He reaches up behind Luc, and there is a gentle _ snnnnckt _as something new plugs into the port at the back of his neck. 

“_ The infamous pirate Alucard Emery, _ ” Astrid Dane says directly into his mind. Her voice is warm, fluid, with an accent he can’t quite place. Her voice is louder than his own breath, his own blood, the beat of his heart. There is the sound of grinding metal somewhere around her voice, and Luc thinks what he hears is a circular saw. “ _ How good to meet you. Holland will bring you home. Then we will fix you up for the job. Your ride is waiting. _”

“See, no need to worry about your implants,” Holland says, leaving the plug in the back of his neck. Luc stumbles forward, his mind a jumble of signals, picking them apart piece by piece as they settle into the folds of his brain. “Astrid will give you new ones.” He frowns, faintly. “She does not use anesthesia. My apologies in advance. The stims help, though.”

As they move through the hallways, Luc becomes aware that his last remaining functioning implants are blinking black.

He is being followed by his Lila, his blade, his right hand. She's smart enough to follow without showing herself. She'll find where they take him.

Holland does not seem to notice, but then he has no key, no knowledge of what he should be looking for. Luc lets the black flash beat against his eyes until they get to the white limousine waiting for them outside, totally incongruous in the dusty nothing that was the Sea. 

No one else would dare drive a car like this here, but the Danes were not like anyone else. They did what they wanted, and the world remade itself in their image.

Holland opens the door with gentlemanly dignity, looking around himself, and Luc gets in. He doesn’t have any choice.

Inside, Astrid Dane raises a hand coated in rings to wave at him. She is tall, and thin, and very little of her still has skin. Next to her is her brother, nearly identical, machines with human hearts hidden behind layers of pure white. 

“Hello, Alucard Emery,” Astrid says warmly. Holland climbs in after him, and when Astrid gestures, he picks up a glass, pouring champagne out of a green bottle into it, expressionless.

He hands Luc the glass, drops something into it that fizzes, and the champagne turns red.

_ Red for love, and for blood. _

“Drink with us,” Astrid says. “This will make you more receptive to the installation later.” Luc at first only sits very still, and finally Holland tilts the glass up to his lips.

Luc drinks, and the champagne tastes like strawberries and blood. When he gags, Astrid laughs, and Athos laughs, and Holland's face does not move at all.

* * *

[(inspired by this fic (and convos with) pinkcupboardwitch here - go give it a read!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759357) Also inspired by conversations with muffinworry about cyberpunk Shades of Magic)


	9. Unsolved Mysteries (Day 9: Alternate Prompt)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is another Serial Killer Gap Year story, for TW for referenced/implied/occasionally outright assault/trauma. The prompt for the day was Time Travel, but I didn't really feel it, so I got an alternate prompt and went with that instead.
> 
> The next few days of prompts are pretty dark, so... bear with me, there's a third date with Kell and Holland once we get to day 13!

_ This program is about unsolved mysteries. Whenever possible, the actual family members and police officials have participated in recreating the events. What you are about to see is not a news broadcast. _

_ Astrid and Athos Dane: fraternal twins born only three minutes apart, nearly identical in every way. Gifted archers and members of their local junior hockey league, they were raised by Marjori Dane, a devoted single mother, in a cabin deep in the Maine woods an hour from Derry. _

“Makes sense that you were raised in the woods.”

“Sssshhhh,” Athos says, tightening his arm around Holland’s waist, feeling the welcome warmth and weight of Holland’s shoulder resting against his chest where they sat with their backs to the headboards in the hotel bed, watching TV. Holland smells like hotel shampoo, and it’s a good, clean smell, and Athos likes the way he smells these days. Like hotel shampoo mostly, but with the way Astrid and Athos smell underneath him. Like he’s one of them. Like he's been marked. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

“But-”

“Ssshhhh. Don’t make me gag you again.”

Holland goes silent. His body tenses at first, but he relaxes again soon enough, and gradually his head falls against Athos, as though he’s having trouble holding it up. 

_ The mysterious disappearance of local quarterback Craig Donaldson - and the subsequent discovery of his body - led to suspicion when it was revealed that Astrid Dane, his high school sweetheart, was the last person to see him alive. _

There’s a re-enactment here, and Athos’s eyes narrow. The actor playing the teenage version of him is wearing a terrible wig, and Astrid has too many curves, isn’t nearly wiry enough. “Bullshit,” Athos mutters. “That woman couldn’t draw a bow like Astrid.”

“She’s pretty,” Holland says, and his words slur together a little.

“The actress, or Astrid?”

Holland laughs, but it’s too late, as though he’s working on a two-second delay. “Yes. They’re both pretty.” Holland’s head lolls to the side, gently resting against his, before he forces it back up again. They watch Craig die, Astrid and Athos stabbing him, the careful way they suggest the dismemberment.

Athos snorts. “That’s not how he died at all.”

Craig had been a body tied to a tree that didn’t yet know it was dead. Astrid shot him through the throat because his throat was always lying, and then it didn’t lie any longer. Astrid had been crying for days, after she found out he had tried to make her out to be a fool; she hadn’t smiled again until Athos showed her Craig tied to the tree.

Then she shot him, and she laughed, and everything was okay again.

_ The two were named persons of interest in his death, but nothing was ever conclusively proven. _

“Damn straight. We’re not_ idiots. _ We don’t _ get _ caught. _ ” _

_ Pulled from school in the aftermath of Craig's death, the twins and their mother retreated from the outside world into their own private idyll… right up until Marjori’s untimely death years later. _

“What did your mother die of?” Holland’s eyes are oddly distant and unfocused, his pupils a little too large for the iris. He’d been crying again earlier, and Astrid had gotten tired of it and given him something to stop him. He hadn’t wanted to take it; Athos had had to hold him down while Astrid forced the pill down his throat, held his mouth and nose shut until he swallowed.

Now he was sweet, and calm, and relaxed in Athos’s arms.

Astrid had the itch tonight, and so she’d gone out, all on her own this time, to find a body. 

It was just the two of them for hours and hours and hours until she came back. Athos had made the most of the unexpected private time, and he and Holland were both freshly-showered by now, with damp hair and that warmth under the skin that lingered after water so hot it was nearly scalding, the only way Holland ever wanted to get clean these days. 

Holland wore pajama pants Astrid had bought for him after he complained about the cold when they were sleeping in the tent, as well as the _ In Yosemite National Park, No One Can Hear You Scream _shirt Athos had made for him with a fabric marker and a lot of patience.

He’d given him the shirt earlier, and that’s what had started the crying. Holland didn’t like to think about the days they spent at Yosemite.

“She was hit by a car,” Athos says quietly. His voice stays even and deep, but his hand tightens around Holland, and he feels the familiar flutter of loss. Their beautiful mother, all white hair and hard jaw and flinty gray eyes. They’d gotten the blue from their father, who they’d never met. Mother had always said they were born from the gods themselves, they belonged to the trickster and his wicked sense of humor. She’d said they were made from Viking blood and the sound a sword made when it cut through skin in the darkest European woods. 

_ You're special, Athos, but only together. _

She’d always said they were born too late, would have been better sent back in time when their skills could be celebrated, when the itch could be answered in battle and not in secret, in the dark. 

Would there have been people like Holland, back then? If he’d met him, then, he’d have called him Baldur, beautiful god, called him Baldur over and over again and cut parts of him off until he answered to it. But he doubted there would have been someone like Holland, back then, at least not someone he would meet or could keep.

The episode is still going, but it’s the part about Mother’s death and the funeral, and Athos tries not to think about that. The days he and Astrid spent sitting across her kitchen table staring at each other, trying to decide what to do next. It hadn’t been until they’d seen the inheritance that they’d had the idea for a road trip.

The TV show does not know that, of course. They only know that Astrid and Athos had gone to her funeral, overseen the final documentation, taken the money, and gone.

“Mother stepped out into the street while shopping,” He says, wondering how long she will be dead and gone before it stops hurting to talk about her, before he stops feeling his throat close up and the hot burn of tears he will not shed. “The driver was looking at his phone.”

“I’m sorry,” Holland says, and the words are a little slurred but sincere. He twists around in Athos’s grip to look at him, puts one hand up to the side of his face. He’s high as a kite, their Holland. When he is drunk, he gets angry or sad. Athos likes him better high. “I’m sorry your mother died.”

“Because if she hadn’t, maybe I wouldn’t have met you?”

Holland doesn’t answer that question. He knows better. He drops his hand, turns back to the TV, starts fiddling with the ring on his right ring finger instead. It’s just a little silver thing Athos had picked up in a mall in Southern California to celebrate a really good day they’d had. They’d eaten tamales and Holland had laughed, a few times, at jokes they told. He’s not allowed to take the ring off; he’ll lose the finger if he does.

_ Shortly after Marjori Dane’s death, the twins - largely secluded from the outside world nearly all their lives - pack up their mother’s minivan and drive away. It’s only when the bills go unpaid that it is discovered the twins are gone. _

“You just… left?”

“Of course we did. That was Mother’s house and her bills, not ours. Once she was gone, it wasn’t a house anymore, just a building our things were in. We decided to take what we want, instead, to see what we want and do what we want. We took you.”

Holland shivers, leaning forward and folding over himself a little bit until Athos raises a hand and forces him back against his chest again. “Don’t move,” He growls, and Holland freezes where he is, but the moment is gone. The two of them had been relaxed, and now it’s gone.

Holland always ruins the goddamn moment. 

_ Marjori’s minivan is found, plates removed, parked along the side of the road along I-40 just past the North Carolina-Tennessee state line. This is the last concrete evidence we have of what happened to Athos and Astrid Dane. _

_ Ever since, a thriving online community has been picking apart potential sightings, the details of how they went missing, looking for clues. The question is this: did the twins walk off into the Great Smoky Mountains? Could they be survivalists living off the land? Did they intend to perish and reunite with their mother, or was there a more sinister plan in the making? _

"Like we'd ever die in the woods," Athos says, genuinely offended. "Astrid makes her own bows. I'm a better shot than a sniper. We just spent _ weeks _in the woods." He snorted in disgust. "Perish in the Smokies, my ass."

“I remember the car from when you found me,” Holland says suddenly. “It was gray. The backseat was soft.” Athos remembers it, too, of course; he remembers everything about his relationship with Holland, every detail. Astrid never remembers the important bits, dates and names and numbers. That’s Athos’s job.

“The four-door?” Athos says, and Holland nods, a little too much, like his head is bobbing on a string. “Wasn’t big enough in the back for you, we had to curl your legs up when we tied you up.”

_ Astrid and Athos Dane are sighted throughout the nation, seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once. There are reports of them in Florida, New Orleans during Mardi Gras, even at Niagara Falls. _

_ None of these sightings has ever been confirmed, but in nearly all of them after their first days in New England, they are accompanied by a mysterious man who bears a striking resemblance to an unsolved missing person’s case in Maryland. _

On the screen, two images appear: on the left, it's a slightly fuzzy driver's license photo of an unsmiling man with hair sticking up on one side of his head, as though he’d rolled out of bed and gone straight to the DMV. On the right, it's blurred footage from the gas station in Arizona, of a black-haired man wearing mirrored sunglasses, a thin white T-shirt, and blue jeans, with a blond man in a black tank top just behind him.

In both, it's Holland.

Holland blinked, eyes widening, sitting up again. “Someone reported me missing?” A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth, where he always gives away his emotions. Athos feels a burst of anger, that he would ever be happy to be found by anyone but them. “Someone noticed I was gone?”

“Astrid’s not going to like that,” Athos says, just to hurt him, just to see his face fall. He shouldn’t be happy anywhere but here. He’s _ theirs _, after all, belongs to the two of them. “She didn’t want you this long in the first place. She’s not going to be happy with those complications.”

_ Unsolved murder cases throughout the nation contain similarities that suggest the same killer is at work, and investigators have begun to believe that Astrid and Athos Dane may be behind these crimes, and that the missing man from Maryland, Holland Vosijk, is somehow involved. _

Holland freezes, as what Athos is really saying begins to sink in. “Is she going to…” His voice trails off, but Athos knows what comes next. Craig had asked that question, too. Most of Astrid’s bodies, when he goes along with her, ask that question in the end. _ Is she going to kill me? _

In every case but one, the answer is _ fuck, yes, and I’m going to watch. _

Athos puts the bowl of popcorn down to the side, leaning over to slide his other arm around him too, nuzzling into the side of his neck, nipping at the silver earring in his ear. Holland swallows, hard, putting a hand up over Athos’s arm, gripping onto it so tightly his nails dig into Athos’s wrist. “Don’t worry,” Athos says soothingly. “Astrid is me. I am Astrid. We are one person, Holland, and both of us want you. As long as I care, nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“M-my hand,” Holland says, and his voice is hoarse. It’s his left hand that is holding Athos; the other one can’t grip that well any longer, although it still has its uses. “You broke my hand, before. With a hammer.”

“That was because you tried to get help. Nothing _ permanently fatal _will happen to you,” Athos corrects himself. “If you behave yourself. Is that better?”

“I don’t know.” The answer is honest, and Athos loves him so much when he is honest and doesn’t try to lie. He bites at his neck, and Holland turns his head the other way to make it easier for him, stares off towards the hotel room door, shifting a little bit, breathing harder.

Does he think about screaming until someone comes? Maybe. But Athos would kill him before anyone ever made it inside the room if he did.

Athos has always felt that going out in a blaze of glory sounded kind of nice, but he won’t let Holland survive it if he does.

_ Who is this mysterious man? Is he the missing Holland Vosijk, whose roommate was found murdered in an apartment where every single door was locked from the inside? Is he simply a coincidence, someone else who just happens to bear a resemblance to Holland Vosijk? Is he another victim? _

_ Or is Holland Vosijk an accomplice in their crimes? _

“No,” Holland says, as though the TV can hear him. Athos doesn’t pull away from him, and he can feel the vibration of his speech through the skin on his neck. “I’m a _ victim _ . I’m not an accomplice. I’m… I’m a _ victim. _”

“You’re definitely an accomplice,” Athos murmurs, bites again, harder this time, trying to draw blood, listening to Holland cry out, even as he tries to muffle himself by biting his own right hand. He bites again, and this time Holland catches himself, only groans against the back of his hand. “They’d charge you alongside us. After all this time, you’d just end up in prison.”

“No,” Holland says again, but it’s weaker this time. Athos pulls back a little, licks at some blood rising from the bite mark, the circle of teeth already darkening. Those faded, drugged-up eyes turn to his. _ That’s right, _ Athos thinks with pure joy and affection. _ That’s right. I’m the one who can reassure you. _ “They wouldn’t. Would they?” 

_ Are these unconfirmed sightings not the twins at all, but merely individuals who look similarly, being mistaken for Astrid and Athos Dane? When will we learn what truly happened to the missing twins from Maine? _

“They’d put you in prison for what you helped us do,” Athos says, a little dreamily. “You’re just like us.”

“No,” Holland says one more time, but it’s only a whisper. Even with the pill, there are tears in his eyes, and Athos wishes he had his phone out to take a picture, to remember this, to always, always remember the way the tears turn his eyes into shattered glass.

_ As always, our tip lines are open, and we invite you to call in if you have seen any of these individuals. _

The host reads off the number twice, just to emphasize, and for a second Holland’s focus is entirely on the screen.

“Guess we’re going back into the national parks again,” Athos says, frowning. He’ll have to tell Astrid to buy a bunch of camping food before she comes back tonight. She’s going to be _ furious. _ “A month or so out in the woods ought to buy us some time for awareness to die back down.”

“Right,” Holland says, and his fingernails dig into Athos’s arm so hard it hurts, it might draw blood. Athos hopes it does. He likes the way it feels when Holland hurts him back. “Right. The parks. The woods. Right. Will I die in the woods? Is it going to be over?" Athos can't tell if he's asking out of fear or hope.

Holland hadn’t liked the national parks. He hadn’t liked the shirt. But Athos would make sure he liked them this time. He just hadn’t tried hard enough, before. He would try harder this time, and Holland would come around. 

They’d bring more campfire coffee packets.

“Of course not, Holland,” Athos says, in a little sing-song voice. "Not as long as I want you to be alive. Let's go star-gazing tomorrow night." Holland turns to look at him, nodding slowly, and when Athos kisses him, his mouth is trembling but he doesn't pull away.

_ Where are Astrid and Athos Dane? Who is the mysterious man? _ _ Perhaps you may be able to help solve a mystery. _

“We’re right here, dumbass,” Athos says out loud, and begins to laugh. "Hey, Holland, have you ever been to Vegas?"


	10. Long Live the Queen (Prompt: Dark Alternate Universe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Writing prompt for Day 10: Dark alternate universe. So my theme is "what is the Danes got ahold of Lila Bard first?"
> 
> Suggested songs to listen to while reading:  
Castle, by Halsey  
you should see me in a crown by billie eilish

_ Long live the queen. _

She makes him say it to her every morning before she lets him get dressed, when the three of them wake up in the beautiful palace she has taken as her own. He is always the first one to wake, her new husband. He is always sitting by the window, watching the sun rise, when Astrid’s eyes open.

Kell will be just on the other side of the door, in the hall, waiting to be called, angry on his brother’s behalf but totally unable to help him. He is always up at sunrise, too, or just before. Kell rarely sleeps, these days, and she likes the shadows under his furious blue and black eyes. 

Holland will be beside him, her empty vessel, her beautiful first _ Antari _, and the shadows are still under his eyes as well, but they are softer.

Her husband sleeps on the side closest to the window, always. Rhy craves the sunlight and hates the night. Astrid sleeps in the center, and on her other side sleeps the third _ Antari _, blade always in her hand even in her deepest slumber. The only one of the three the queen has not marked for obedience, because obedience is not required from Delilah Bard.

Holland had found her a hungry young thief in another London, recognized her for what she was, and brought her home. There had been a choice, of course; they could have marked her as they had Holland, ensured lifelong obedience by pain of blade and ink, but there had been something in the ferocity in her eyes that Astrid recognized.

Like called to like, and when Athos suggested the rune, she shook her head.

Astrid always has the final say, of course. She had leaned over to her twin, her brother, her shining north star, and said, “She is like us, if we want her.”

Athos wanted her. So did Astrid.

So they offered her three things: wealth, adventure, and magic, and Delilah Bard looked into the white faces of the Maktahn king and queen and accepted them all, with one condition.

Then she trained with Holland for three years, awakening the power in her and honing it sharp as the knives she carried by the dozen. They sent her to the Maresh London disguised, let her befriend Kell Maresh, let her teach him to love her. Then, when Astrid was ready, Delilah Bard had taken one of her blades, shining black and formed from magic, and held it against Kell Maresh's gorgeous throat. Kell was a strong _ Antari _\- she wouldn’t have wanted him if he wasn’t - but Holland and Lila moved as one unit after three years of Holland’s training, and Kell had been wrapped in Holland’s chains in the end.

Her two _ Antari _ became three, and Astrid and Athos had them all, all the _ Antari _, all to themselves.

Ever since her coronation here in Arnes, the wedding with her new king standing by her side, she and Delilah Bard had an understanding.

"Long live the queen," the king says when he sees she is awake. Astrid smiles, languidly, at the empty courtesy in Rhy’s voice, the words rote, automatic, compelled. She could have given him his own room, of course, have him sleep separately.

But where would the fun be in that?

She pushes herself up on her elbows, the sheets shifting to expose pale shoulders and paler breasts, marked with the cuts from the night before, tracked with black veins.

Her husband is marked, too: by daylight with the obedience carved by Athos’s knife and written in his ink across his left cheek for any and all to see.

(She wants them to see it. Before their wedding, she paraded him through his own streets marked like that, the wound still bleeding, and Rhy rode his horse with his head held high and his dark eyes blazing and proud)

He is marked at night with the cuts left from Delilah's knives, when Astrid wants him in the bed. When she doesn't, he goes to the chair by the window, where he is now.

Last night, she wanted him in the bed. His brother will be angry when he sees the cuts. He always is. Astrid _ loves _ to see Kell angry.

Delilah Bard shifts next to her, eyes fluttering open. Her glass eye had not fooled Holland, and to see her in action, awakened to power and trained by him, was to witness joyful death.

Astrid might be in love with her.

"Is he up already?" Delilah asks, and her voice is rough with sleep. Astrid leans down to kiss the furrow away from her forehead, and Delilah presses their lips together, and for a moment her husband is forgotten entirely.

“He is always up already,” Astrid murmurs, and Delilah pushes up against her, and Astrid is tempted to go back to bed while this version of her Lila is still here with her.

Astrid’s hands move to the curve of one small breast. She thumbs gently at a nipple, then twists hard. Her smile is razor-sharp at Delilah’s intake of breath, the way she arches her back to push into the touch like a cat. Astrid bites her lower lip, looking at the desire that clouds her _ Antari’ _s face, and for a moment she loses herself in the hard muscles that rope around Delilah’s skinny arms, the hard flat stomach, the long legs that might wrap around her, licks at her breasts and then up between them to her neck.

There is nothing soft about Lila Bard. Astrid explores her, even as her Lila's hands trail the lines of black under her skin, glide fingernails along the remnants of last night’s knives. Delilah’s breath goes from calm to ragged to moaning under Astrid's expert touch, and if she slid her hand between her _ Antari’s _ legs, she’d be ready for her. Delilah is like this so rarely when the sun rises.

At night Lila Bard is a creature of lust and knives, and Astrid Dane has both to spare. 

In the day, it's mostly knives - but there are a few fleeting moments in the morning, where Lila rises to her touch. 

Her husband is not watching - he never does, he’s unfailingly polite - but it’s not like it would matter if he did. She did not marry him because she wanted him in her bed; that’s just a pleasant side effect. It’s a twist of victory, to force this man into the mold she knows women are usually forced into, marrying someone they hate.

But when his father's war was lost, and she told him to choose between a marriage where he wears his obedience on his skin and the deaths of thousands of his people, he chose the marriage. He chose to obey. 

He's such a good king.

“Can we?” Lila asks, and her voice is heavy with desire. She is twisting under Astrid’s hands and there is nothing quite like being queen. Astrid glances over her shoulder at her husband, who has his eyes on the sky outside his window once again. He is still naked, and his body is magnificent, and _ there is nothing so wonderful as being the queen. _

“Mmmmn.” It is all Astrid says, before she moves her hand, and Lila rises to meet her and opens her legs, already wet. Lila’s hands, with her fingernails filed sharp as knives, scratch thin skin and send sparks through Astrid like tiny fires. Astrid takes a moment to sit back, grabs Lila’s knife off the bed, and smiles. “Bleed for me,” She says softly.

Delilah laughs, a thick and throaty sound, and holds out her wrist. “Fuck me, then,” She replies, one eyebrow raising in challenge. 

Astrid leans over, slicing her _ Antari's _ wrist open, lapping blood from the wound that sings with magic, listening to Lila's breathy moan at the ache and the rush of it, and thinks that she is in love with her _ Antari _woman, harder than her men in spirit, sweeter than they are in bed, and she is so glad that Holland brought her home to Makt.

When they are done, the sheets are spotted with blood, and Astrid knows her other _ Antari _have been standing outside the door the whole time, as they must, until she emerges.

And her husband has been sitting by the window, waiting for her to finish, to give him permission to put his clothes on. He never changes expression, not even when Lila's moans turn to cries, not even when Astrid's iron self-control breaks and she cries out, too.

Pulling away from Lila’s arms is hard, but she manages somehow. Astrid Dane, once-queen of Makt and current reigning queen of the vast Arnesian Empire, gets out of bed.

Lila watches her, eyes half-lidded with the remnants of her lust. “I wish you could stay here all day with me,” She says, a little wistfully, the closest she has ever seen Delilah Bard get to being soft.

Astrid smiles over her shoulder, a hint of an apology on her black-veined face. “I am ruling an empire, Lila,” She says softly. “And we are already an hour late.”

“We could be later.”

“... another day.” She looks at her husband now, sun resting on his skin like the kind of kiss she will never give him, and says, "You may dress."

He stands immediately, moving past her to the wardrobe to pull out the deep red shirt with gold embroidery and matching pants she knows he will choose to wear, and she watches him go with a smirk. After a moment, she looks over to see Delilah Bard is watching him, too, holding the knife Astrid had cut her with earlier, playing with it in her hands.

Magic, wealth, and adventure. Delilah had agreed immediately to their terms, with her caveat being that they swore on their own graves that she would never wear obedience.

So she didn't.

Holland and Kell knelt against their will, the both of them, but Lila Bard knelt to no one at all. Not unless she wanted to, not unless it was her idea, and then Astrid knelt for her, too.

How easy it had been, to convince a hungry girl starved for life to help her take a kingdom. How simple and strange and inevitable it had felt to watch her train with Holland, grow up and grow older, and finally fall for her a little more each day. Delilah Bard was fierce, and unrivaled, and determined. Now she was the most powerful person in Arnes who was not named king or queen. When they did not need her, she roamed on a ship Astrid had taken from a privateer who had involved himself in the riots, finding her adventures, then returning home to see her queen.

Astrid dresses, pulling on a pair of black pants tucked into boots, a looser shirt, if only just. Finally she settles the crown the dead queen once wore onto her head. 

She looks good in that bitch's crown.

Her husband watches her. He is already dressed and wearing his own royal crown, not a button out of place, every inch the king if it weren't for the rune carved and inked on his right cheek. The king does not look miserable. He does not look happy. He looks nothing at all.

“Can I see him today?” Rhy asks her, and his voice is soft. She wonders sometimes what goes in inside his head, behind the courtier’s mask. She wonders what he and Kell say to each other, when they are alone and drinking themselves into oblivion. 

She chooses the mercies she grants. Giving Rhy access to Kell without her in the room is one of them.

Letting him go see the man in the prisons is another.

“Yes, after lunch,” She replies, thoughtfully. “For a few hours at least.”

He nods, and licks his lips a little, and she wonders what he says to the privateer in the prisons that he visits nearly every day. She knows what they _ do, _and she doesn’t mind.

She didn’t marry him because she wanted to sleep with him, after all. And kings often keep lovers on the side.

“Thank you, Astrid,” Her husband says, and she smiles. 

“_ Thank you, Astrid _,” Delilah mocks him, and he doesn’t respond, doesn’t so much as flicker an eyelid. He is a consummate courtier, her husband, and an excellent king. He is the perfect man to stand by her side, in no small part because he wants nothing to do with her, and she returns the feeling in full.

"Oh, let him be. Get dressed, Bard," Astrid says over her shoulder. Lila, grumbling, slides naked out of bed as well. She is lean, still, but not half so half-starved as when they met her. She pulls on black, always black, and when she finally stands, she looks like an assassin, draped in form-fitting black from head to toe.

Delilah Bard dresses like Holland, and to see them with Kell standing in the center, stubbornly wearing the dead king's red, is a beautiful thing. A symbol of her victory.

She gives her husband a kiss. He does not want her to. That is not why she kisses him.

Delilah Bard comes up behind her, a sparkle in her eyes, and kisses him, too. Because she cuts him if he doesn’t, he responds to her as best he can. "Look at you today," She says, and he looks away from her, but he says nothing.

Queens keep lovers on the side, too. At least, they do in Astrid’s kingdom.

When she opens the door, her men are there to meet her. Kell slouches against the opposite wall, hands jammed deep in his pockets, and in his face (and his carving, marked on his cheek just like his brother’s, because she wants _ everyone _to see it) there is all the misery and hatred Rhy is better at hiding.

Holland is next to him, back straight, ignoring him with frankly impressive skill. Holland's life is easier, ever since he brought her Lila. Holland sleeps, now.

He'd brought the girl to them on his own, and Astrid had rewarded him with the mercy of being left alone.

“Kneel,” She says imperiously, and watches them both fall to their knees for her. Holland kneels gracefully, with long experience, but Kell makes the rune force him down, and the crack of his knees on the floor is audible. Kell's knees are always bruised these days. 

Rhy flinches at her side.

Lila smiles and throws a knife that passes so close by Kell’s head that his hair shifts with the breeze it causes before it buries itself in the wall.

Kell doesn’t flinch. Lila throws knives at him every day. She almost always misses.

She lets them rise, finally, and they make their way down the hall, the queen at the front, her husband and Delilah just behind her, and the two remaining Antari trailing at the back.

She wonders if Holland and Kell speak, these days, now that they are both living the same nightmare… or if they continue on in the sullen silence that has marked their lives since Astrid Dane took the crown of Arnes out of a dead woman’s hand, a woman who ruled so briefly after Athos cut off her husband’s head.

Athos rules in Makt, and she rules in Arnes, and they straddle two worlds between them, send their captive _ Antari _ back and forth to serve. Athos always asks for Kell.

She doesn't ask why, but she doesn't have to.

She will speak to him later, through the little stone tool she keeps in her room. They never go a day without speaking. Sometimes they walk right through the open doors to see each other, and she gets to watch Makt return to life even as she bleeds Arnes of its dignity.

When she enters the throne room, they all kneel for her, these people with their foreign clothes and foreign tastes and foreign tongue. The mindless guards line the hall, line the walls of the palace, line the city. 

There were riots, when Astrid first crowned herself queen and declared her husband her consort. 

The riots did not last long. They brought a few unhappy peasants; Astrid Dane had brought an army utterly incapable of mercy.

Astrid stands, queen of an empire in a living, joyful, magic-filled world, and she is truly, genuinely, purely happy.

Her husband holds his hand out to help her step up the dais to her throne, and she smiles at him. He does not smile back, but she did not marry him for his smile. She did not marry him for his body, or for his love, or for his mind. 

She married him to show his country and his brother and the whole fucking world that they would all be so much dust under her feet. The only one with a choice now is Astrid fucking Dane.

Holland takes his place just behind her throne to the right. Delilah stands to the left, a vicious little smile playing across her face. They wear matching black.

And Kell Maresh, in a bright red coat slick like blood, who was once the bane of her existence and a flame she couldn’t put out, stands before the throne and speaks the words he is bound - compelled - to say.

“All hail Queen Astrid Dane and King Rhy Maresh of Arnes.” His voice shakes with the rage that has never quite left him. She hopes it never does. She loves her angry _ Antari _boy.

He turns back to her, and she holds out one hand, watching the helpless anger in him as he slowly takes it, leans over, and kisses the giant ruby ring she took off Maxim's corpse herself.

She loves this kingdom and all its life and its never-ending scent of flowers. She loves Delilah Bard in her bed. She loves Kell called to her brother at Athos's whim.

Astrid loves, loves, loves.

She sits back, letting her fingertips graze the back of Rhy’s hand. 

“Say it,” She whispers to him. She loves most of all the sound of her husband speaking the words she commands him to say.

“Long live the queen,” Rhy Maresh says softly back, as he sits next to a wife who is wearing his dead mother’s crown.


	11. Nothing Good Can Come of Las Vegas (Day 11: Whump)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Rape implied, sexual assault, forced piercing/needles, consider it NSFW. 
> 
> The prompt for Day 11 was whump and, uh, I took it very seriously. But hey, Day 12 is going to be cyberpunk again and Day 13 brings back Holland Vosijk, Grad Student, so... 
> 
> This is another in the Astrid and Athos Dane: Serial Killers on a Road Trip series, also known as me testing my ability to write darker stuff.

It was in Las Vegas that Holland broke Athos Dane’s heart.

“I’m not mad,” Athos whispered into his ear. “I’m  _ disappointed. _ ” He pushed Holland’s face into the mattress, twisting his arms up behind his back until he heard a satisfying grunt of pain. “I’m  _ hurt.  _ We were going to take you _ gambling. _ ”

“I didn’t-” Holland’s voice was muffled, and Athos let up a little, letting him turn his head. “I didn’t do anything  _ wrong-” _

“You tried to  _ leave me,  _ Holl.”

Astrid moved forward, looking to Athos for confirmation. He had as good a grip on him as he was going to get, for now, and he nodded. “Do it.”

“I’m sorry he’s done this to you, Athos,” Astrid said quietly, letting one fingertip trail the inside of his wrists where Athos had forced them together. She was smiling, but it was a hard smile, one without humor or gentleness. Her eyes were glacial.

“Fuck, please, don’t hurt me-”

“Ssshhhh. Of course we’re going to hurt you.” She closed the handcuffs around his wrists, and the sound of the cuffs clicking closed, one and then the other, was as familiar by now as the way Holland's breathing changed when he was restrained. “I honestly can’t believe you’d  _ do this _ to him,” She said quietly, running a finger up Holland's spine over the light gray shirt he was wearing. "Were you  _ trying  _ to be an asshole? We thought you were  _ different _ , but you're just like the rest of them, aren’t you? Lying to my  _ Athos... _ "

There was a simmering protective sisterly rage in that soft quiet voice that could have chilled a hot tub to ice. 

Holland struggled, trying to get away from them, but on his knees on the bed with his hands behind his back, Athos leaning all his weight into holding him down, and his head pushed down onto an ancient mattress, he wasn’t going far. 

Astrid sat beside him, gently stroking his hair, the black hair that Athos loved so much. “He  _ loves you, _ ” Astrid said, with a disappointed tsk of tongue against teeth. “And you  _ betrayed him. _ ”

“I- I was just taking a walk-” Holland’s voice was hoarse, and raw, and desperate, and Athos felt himself stir to life just  _ hearing it,  _ just seeing the fear in his eyes _ .  _ Holland used that same voice, that same look in his eyes, when he begged them to stop… he had to  _ know  _ how good that voice sounded. He had to know what kind of effect that voice could have on someone.

They’d been together long enough that Holland had to know what would get him going by now.

“We weren’t born yesterday,” Astrid said in a soothing murmur, reaching out to gently push the hair out of his eyes. He didn't look at her. He  _ should _ look at her. Athos frowned at the rudeness and jammed a thumb into the palm of his right hand until Holland grunted at the ache. “Athos  _ saw  _ you trying to call the police at that payphone.”

“Trying to call the TV people, probably,” Athos grumbled. “After we had  _ such  _ a good night together, too.”

“No, that wasn't- wasn't what I was doing,” Holland grunted, closing his eyes, but his voice was a little weaker.

The twins looked at each other, and where Astrid was cold, Athos’s anger burned. But she was angry for  _ him,  _ because Holland had tried to leave  _ him,  _ and that was a comfort, too. Athos grabbed Holland by his pretty black hair and yanked him backwards and up until he was sitting with his back to Athos’s chest, hands cuffed behind him. Athos let his own legs splay out on either side of Holland's, feeling the warmth of their opposite image man between them.

“Don't lie to us, you little shit. Don’t you  _ dare _ ." He forced Holland’s head back against his shoulder, feeling the wonderful brush of that black hair against his neck. "I can’t believe you would try to lie to me after what you  _ did _ . After you tried to _ leave us. _ ”

“I didn’t try to  _ leave you, _ ” Holland groaned. “We’re not in a fucking  _ relationship-” _

Astrid frowned. “He has lies stuck in his throat. We should cut it open to let them all out.”

“Fuck,” Holland whispered, leaning back into Athos a little, trying to push himself away from her. His weight felt good against Athos’s chest, the way it always did. 

“Ssshhhhh,” He said softly into Holland’s ear. “Don’t worry, Holland. I can protect you. I can keep you safe. Just trust me. I’m not mad you said that. I know you’re just lying because you’re scared."

_ Just trust me, love me, stop trying to leave. _

"I can  _ fix  _ his lies,” Athos said to Astrid, meeting her eyes again. “We don’t need to cut them out. We can teach him not to do it ever again.”

Athos had seen Holland at a payphone when he came back from doing a bit of shopping. How he’d gotten out of the handcuffs in the first place, Athos had no idea; he must have not quite let them close. His fault, really. Plus there was the further question of why there was a  _ payphone  _ anywhere at all.

He had caught him in the middle of trying to dial a number, and had simply put a hand on his shoulder and reached over, taken the phone away from him, and dropped it back into the cradle. Holland claimed he just wanted to order a pizza, held desperately to the lie all the way back.

His hand on Holland’s shoulder had been a heavy weight and he knew it. He’d watched his shoulders slump and that awful hopeful light go out of his eyes with unadulterated delight. Holland had kept his head down and his eyes on the ground as they walked back to the seedy motel in a shitty part of Vegas that Astrid had chosen.

She always picked the best places; places where no one would care or look too closely.

Athos kept his arm around Holland’s shoulder like they were old, old friends.

He’d checked a couple of times, and he didn’t think the cops had ever come to see if anyone had really needed help. Hell, maybe Holland  _ had  _ just been ordering a pizza, but that was still breaking the rules for getting out of his handcuffs and leaving the room in the first place.

You had to have rules, in a relationship. Had to have boundaries. He'd thought Holland respected the rules by now.

It was one of the reasons Athos loved him so much; he was difficult, and complicated, and beautiful. Athos had a weakness for difficult beauties. He just rarely left them alive this long, and Holland had never appreciated that either, that he was the longest relationship Astrid and Athos had ever shared.

They shared all their relationships, just like they shared everything else. The men and women rarely understood they were to be shared, but they learned, soon enough. Everyone learned. Then they became a body.

Holland just never appreciated that he wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere by now. He had no concept of  _ gratitude _ , and they had worked hard to train it into him, but they must have missed a spot inside his head.

“We’ve shown you almost the whole country now,” Astrid said thoughtfully. She stepped back off of the bed, walking across the room, stripping her clothing off as she went. Athos didn’t try to look; she was his  _ sister _ , after all, that was disgusting. 

Instead, he turned Holland’s head so  _ he _ could see her, and when Holland closed his eyes against the image, he whispered into his ear, “Watch her or I’ll take your eyes out.”

Holland’s eyes flew back open, and he swallowed hard. “Athos, please-”

“Shut up. We had a good thing going, and you had to  _ ruin it. _ ”

Astrid changed, taking her time, into a simple strappy tank top and shorts, clothing she wouldn’t mind getting a little blood on. “You really did, Hol. We took you so many places, you’ve seen so much of the country by now with us. How can you be so  _ ungrateful?  _ Athos has done so much for you. We’ve been  _ so good _ to you.”

“You fucking  _ kidnapped me!  _ You killed my friend, you bitch! You kidnapped me, you hurt me- you  _ kill people! _ ” Holland shouted. Athos grabbed onto his right hand and squeezed as hard as he could, forcing the bones that had never healed right together with a grind that he could  _ feel  _ through his skin, and Holland let out a hoarse half-scream. 

“Don’t talk to my sister that way,” Athos said, very quietly, into his ear.

“I-I’m sorry.” The grip on his hand loosened, just a little, and Holland let out a soft ‘haaaaah’ of pain. Athos let his thumb circle around the palm, letting the threat to do it again sink in.

“Say 'I'm sorry I yelled at you, Astrid.'"

“I'm sorry I yelled, Astrid.” Holland dropped his head forward, but Athos grabbed it and forced it back against his shoulder, Holland’s back arching trying to get  _ away  _ from him, and Athos felt the stirrings of an anger that went deeper than simple betrayal. “I'm  _ sorry.  _ That  _ hurt. _ ”

“I’m sure it did,” Astrid said, unperturbed, picking up a knife with a large, wickedly serrated blade from the table. She idly examined the blade, then slowly turned to point it right at him. “Just like you hurt my brother. Just like you hurt his  _ heart.  _ Just like you broke it when you  _ tried to leave him.” _

“I’m not his goddamn  _ boyfriend!” _

“No,” Astrid replied, lifting the blade to let the dim light in the motel room catch and glint along the edges, looking it over with perfect calm. She looked like a warrior, with a knife so big. She looked like a queen. “You’re  _ our  _ goddamn boyfriend. Everything that belongs to one of us belongs to the other.”

“No,” Holland whispered, but the word was barely a breath of air.

“Yes. We take what we want,” Athos murmured against his ear, biting at his earlobe. Holland tried to move his head away, and it was funny that he would try to run away and then  _ struggle  _ like this, when he had to know how good it felt to have him moving like that right up against Athos. “We want you. I want you. You’d be dead if it weren’t for me.”

He and Astrid met eyes, blue on blue, and she smiled a little at him. She had the sweetest smile for him, his sister, the gentlest expression. “Should he say he’s sorry for running? Would that help you feel better?” She asked. 

“He  _ should _ say he loves us,” Athos said softly, sucking on the skin on the side of Holland's neck, hearing him make a sound deep in his throat. Disgust or fear, Athos didn’t care which. They both felt like a kiss to him. “I tell him I love him all the time, he never says it back.”

“Oh, Athos,” Astrid sad a little sadly. “You  _ know _ that takes time. You can’t force him to feel love, not before he’s ready. If he said it to you right now, it'd be false. No more lies from Holland’s pretty throat, hm? Let’s just focus on apologies today. He’s going to love us in the end, I promise. One day, when he says it, you'll know it's real.”

“You're fucking crazy," Holland whispered, but he'd said that before. There was no sting in those words.

“Watch yourself,” Astrid snapped. “I don’t like that word, and I _ will _ cut out that tongue my brother loves so much to keep you from using it. Athos is the only reason you survived the first night.”

“I can’t believe he tried to run after I even bought him a  _ present _ .” Athos pressed a kiss to the side of Holland’s head, feeling him reflexively try to pull away from it. He laughed, sliding one arm around his waist to hold him still while the other went up to play at the tiny silver earring in his right ear. Athos loved that earring. He was going to give him so many more, eventually. “I’ve always thought you’d look good with a cartilage piercing right at the top,” He murmured, then looked back at Astrid. “He never liked this one, I thought maybe it wasn’t big enough.”

“That’s not why I didn’t like it,” Holland protested, but he kept his voice low, and he had gone very still.

“No one cares what you like,” Astrid said. “What matters is what my brother likes.” She was so beautiful, his sister, beautiful in all the ways he wasn’t, and ugly in all the same ways as him at the same time. Their mother had told them they must always care for each other, that no one else would understand them. 

She had been the one to tell Astrid to help him with the itch, to tell Athos that he must be the thing Astrid centered her world around, because they only really had each other.

_ You’re special, my son. You’re special together. _

They'd been lost when Mother died, until Astrid had come up with the idea of a road trip. No one had ever understood them but their mother.

Holland would understand them one day, he thought. Before he died. 

“What did you buy him a present  _ for?” _ Astrid asked. “Besides, you’re always buying him things. Like the  _ cow mug  _ you bought him back in Colorado.”

“I make him use that cow mug all the time.”

“Fair enough.”

“Besides, did you forget?” Athos asked her, blinking, a little offended. He let the hand on Holland’s ear move to hold him by the chest with one heavily muscled arm, while his left hand began to trail lower, pushing Holland’s shirt up so he could feel the skin underneath. “It’s our anniversary today. Six months with our Holl-doll.”

“Please don’t call me that.” Holland’s voice had gone weaker, and Athos could feel his heart beating underneath the weight of his arm, the fear-fast beat that he loved. That pretty heart, a strong muscle under just a little bit of bone and skin. He could crack it out and drink the blood, he thought, and it would be like love. It would be like a sacrifice Holland made for him.

“Six months already?” Astrid counted on her fingers, then grinned, a mouthful of bright white teeth that sometimes seemed nearly the same color as her skin. “Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. What did you get him?”

“Look in the bag on the table.”

Astrid rustled around in the plastic bag for a moment, and Athos took the time to let his fingernails scrape just a little over Holland’s skin around his navel, undoing the top button on the jeans he always wore. 

Holland had given up fighting, for now; he sagged back against Athos, his head dropping down again, breathing in harsh pants, his left hand in a fist and his right loosely closed, fingers still splayed a little, the closest it could get. 

“Are you trying not to cry?” He asked, in a low voice. “Go ahead, if you want to.” Holland cried so rarely, and it was so lovely when he did. They'd taken video of him crying, the last time. Athos watched it sometimes when Holland was sleeping between them.

“No,” Holland replied, and his voice was low, and even, and showed no signs of tears at all. Athos frowned at the disappointment. “Am I going to die?”

“No, baby,” Athos soothed, unzipping Holland’s jeans slowly, listening to the scrape of metal on metal as the tongue pulled down through the teeth. “Not this time. Do you want to?”

Holland was silent, but slowly shook his head. 

Astrid watched them as she pulled her hair back with the hair-tie she always kept around one wrist, getting it out of her face. She stood there all wiry, hard muscles with faint soft curves and Athos loved her.  _ My other half, my sister, my twin. I understand you, and you me, and that is all we need. _

_ Plus Holland. _

“He looks good like that,” Astrid said in a voice like the other half of Athos’s breath.

“Let’s go ahead and give him his present.” Athos slid his hand under the waistline of Holland’s boxers, listening to his breathing speed up, just a little, as he shifted under the touch.

Athos was  _ very good _ at presents.

He bought Holland lots of gifts, everywhere they went, but there was a special one for every month they’d been together, and he spent all his driving time thinking about the next monthly anniversary. The first month had been the silver earring, which he’d thought made Holland look sort of dashing. The second had been driving gloves after they had to break his right hand, so he could hide all the mottled bruising and swelling. The third had been a book he’d found he thought Holland would like, and he’d even left him alone in the backseat of the car for days and days and days so he could read the book from start to finish while Athos and Astrid took turns driving.

That one, at least, Holland had actually thanked him for.

The fourth had been the sunglasses from Astrid, designer and expensive. The fifth had been… what had the fifth been? He couldn’t quite remember last month’s gift. Probably something great, though. Athos forgot things, when the itch came back, and last month had been really bad for the itch.

They'd let Holland stay in the car as a reward for how good he'd been, and he'd read a new book Astrid had let him pick out, using the little booklight Astrid had bought him at a gas station somewhere in Wyoming, while they got rid of the evidence.

Whatever the fifth gift had been, he  _ did _ remember that it had come off the body, and Holland hadn't liked it. He never wanted anything to do with the bodies.

“Perfect.” Astrid pulled a cigarette lighter out of the pocket of the jeans she’d tossed over a chair, flicking it open to watch the flame, then closing it again. She repeated the motion a few times, a slow, sweet smile on her face, eyes half-lidded, then slowly leaned over and turned on her iPod, the little speakers she’d hooked it up to starting up a thumping beat. 

Holland knew this song by now. His face went pale, eyes wide. “I don’t want to be a body,” He said hoarsely, pleading. “I don’t want to be a body.”

“You’re not going to be, you pretty thing. I just need to make sure no one hears you.” She turned up the volume and faced the speakers towards the door, then turned back with a smile. “You want to do the honors, little brother, or shall I?”

“Littler by three minutes. I want to touch him,” Athos said.

“Three minutes counts. You’re  _ already _ touching him.” Astrid pointed. “Trust me, he noticed.”

“I want to touch him  _ more. _ ”

She smiled, indulgently. “Of course, Athos. I’ll take care of it, then. You just take care of  _ him. _ "

“What… what are you going to do?” Holland looked up at her, shifting uncomfortably underneath Athos’s hand. There was naked fear mixed with a wonderful resignation in his face. Athos loved that face; he buried his expressions so well out in the world, where there might be innocent bystanders who would suffer if they saw him looking sad and asked questions, but here in the motel room with dim light coming through the blinds and only Athos and Astrid to see, he let it show. 

“Sssshhhhh,” Astrid said gently. “It’s a day to  _ celebrate _ , darling. Celebrate  _ and  _ punish. Athos loves you, so we love you. You can't ever leave us."

"I love you, Holland," Athos said, and he meant it, he truly did. 

"Oh, God.”

Astrid held a large needle over her lighter’s flame, moving it methodically back and forth, watching the glint with total focus. Once she was satisfied, she poured some rubbing alcohol out of a bottle from the same bag and dipped the needle in it, dried it carefully on a soft cloth, then held it over the flame again. 

“A-another ear piercing?” Holland asked in a whisper. Athos pulled him close, shifting his pants further down on his hips, to give himself better access, listening to the slightest little sound he was trying not to make, feeling his hips shift unwillingly to push into Athos’s hand more. When he spoke, there was a hitch in his breath, the only sound to give away that he was hard in Athos’s hand, even staring at Astrid and a needle. “Is that what it is?”

“What  _ what  _ is?” Athos asked softly. Holland never seemed to  _ want  _ to, but sooner or later he always started responding to Athos’s touch, and now was no different. Athos knew this by heart by now; the change in breathing when the handcuffs went on, the way it sped up with fear and went slow and careful when he was being touched, the way he never made a sound until the very end or if they hurt him enough.

“Is that why she has the needle?” Holland was watching Astrid, even as Athos touched him, and that was fine. If you looked at one, you were looking at the other. They had always looked almost exactly alike. He could feel Holland’s eyes just as much this way. “Athos, ah, p-please don’t-”

“You don’t get to say ‘don’t’,” Athos said softly. “Not after you tried to leave me.”

“Not  _ exactly _ another ear piercing.” Astrid had finished her preparations and took a small box out of the bag, walking over to them with deliberate slowness, putting one foot directly in front of the other. She climbed up onto the bed, smiling, tendrils of white-blonde hair falling into her face as she settled herself directly in front of Holland, kneeling in front of him. She set the little box, the needle, an odd little tool that looked like a large tweezer, and the knife down, taking his chin in one hand, tilting his head up to look at her.

“No one suffers like you,” She said in a soft, loving whisper. “You are never going to get away from my goddamn brother, you lying, betraying piece of  _ shit _ . You’ll never, ever hurt him again. I hope you can’t  _ walk  _ tomorrow by the time he’s done with you. I hope you can barely  _ stand. _ ” Holland’s pretty green eyes stared in terror into Astrid’s brilliant, glacial blue. “You’re our  _ favorite _ , Hol, our favorite forever. We’re never going to let you go. We love you so much.”

“ _ So  _ much,” Athos said. “You belong between us, forever.” Astrid smiled, her smile Athos loved the most, hard and mean, the smile of a Valkyrie. She tightened her grip on Holland’s chin and turned his head so that Athos could kiss him. Holland made a sound that wasn’t quite fear or pain or pleasure or disgust, but some mixture of all four. 

“Keep your eyes closed,” Athos said softly, nuzzling against his face, “and your mouth on me. Don’t think about it. It doesn’t have to hurt so bad if you don’t think about it. Think about my hand. Just think about me touching you. Keep kissing me or I promise you’ll regret stopping.” He felt Holland force himself to respond to the kiss, and thought,  _ God, yes, he’s finally learning. _

Or at least he wanted to live through the night. 

Athos didn’t really care which; the love would come later, he was sure of it. Holland just didn’t like when they lived in the national parks, didn’t like what they did there. He’d feel love if they stayed out here driving again. He could learn not to lie or try to run away again.

Astrid laughed, picking up the knife with the serrated blade and using it to cut Holland’s shirt apart, pushing the fabric aside. She tilted her head, making her mouth into a red-lipped snarl, tapping the knife against her teeth thoughtfully. Athos, even with his eyes closed, could hear the little clicking sound it made, could almost feel the cold blade against his own teeth.

He didn’t know when she picked up the little tool to pinch up the skin just above his collarbone. He didn’t know when she picked up the needle. But he knew  _ exactly _ when she thrust the needle through - Holland jumped, the handcuffs rattling as he instinctively tried to pull his hands apart. He cried out, just shy of a scream, but Athos only pushed their mouths harder together, letting the vibration and the sound get lost inside his own throat, too.

And his hand never stopped moving.

Astrid was smiling, as she pushed the needle through the skin just above Holland’s collarbone on his left side, moving with perfect care and precision to force it back out about an inch up. Blood welled up, and Astrid swallowed hard at the sight. “Wonderful,” She murmured, and her eyes were brilliant and sparkling and her face flushed red. She leaned down and licked up the droplet of blood, then laughed, thick and throaty laughter that seemed somehow to twine around the beat of the music. “God, you taste so good. Good boy. Don’t move.”

She slid the surface barbell through under the skin while Holland continued to make wonderful little pain sounds into Athos’s mouth. Finally, she attached the tiny little black balls that went on the ends, like bits of obsidian that had been polished to smoothness, so dark the light seemed to sink into them rather than shine off. Once it was secure, she sat herself back, looking over her handiwork. 

Athos finally let Holland’s mouth break free and he slumped back against him, letting out a soft groan. “H-hurts-”

“You deserved worse than that, be happy this is where it ends.” Astrid flicked one tiny black ball with her fingernail, smiling at the way he hissed at the pain. “He did pretty well.”

“He did  _ great _ . Never even stopped being hard. Guess he’s used to the two things going together by now.” Athos kissed the side of Holland’s face, and there was a cold sweat there now that hadn’t been before. Astrid laughed, the sound like bells ringing in Athos’s mind, going back to the table to pull a tall, clear bottle out of the plastic bag, opening it with an audible ‘pop’ as the cork burst free. She drank it straight, a little drop rolling out the side of her mouth, down her neck, over her chest to soak into the tank top.

Holland wasn’t watching, and that was disappointing, but Athos could forgive him right now. After all, the new piercing on his collarbone probably hurt like hell. Astrid had the steady hand with the needle, but Athos was the one who cared enough to make sure Holland had a good time, too. 

As if he knew what Athos was thinking, Holland’s head fell back against him again. Soft black hair on the side of his face, hard in his hand, moving against him, his eyes glazed and staring off into nothing. Was that hopelessness? Just desire? Holland’s eyes were so hard to read. “I love you like this,” Athos whispered. “You’re going to love me back one day.”

Holland only closed his eyes, that corner of his mouth turning down, that little frown that always gave him away, but he was beginning to move against Athos’s hand a little bit more, and Athos could feel the pleasant pressure of Holland’s own hands against the front of his jeans.

Astrid came back, holding the bottle in one hand, swaying with her eyes half-closed along with the music, singing in a soft, deep alto, "'I'm the queen of everything and my tongue is a weapon,' spinning a little, her face alight with joy. She held the bottle to Athos's mouth and he drank, letting the vodka burn his throat straight down.

“Thanks,” Athos said a little breathlessly as she pulled the bottle away. “Give Holland some, too, he’s  _ very sorry _ for trying to run away. Aren’t you sorry, Hol?” He tightened his grip until Holland’s eyes flew open again.

“Y-yes,” He said hoarsely. “Yes. I’m sorry I tried to call someone. I’m sorry.” Astrid smiled lovingly at him, letting him drink from the bottle, too. Holland drank vodka like water these days, but she tipped it too far too fast, and he coughed, some of it spilling out of his mouth. 

Athos tilted his head, looking down at the little black piercings set just above Holland’s collarbone, surrounded by angry red skin. “Looks like a vampire bite,” He said thoughtfully. “A few inches too low for that, but still. Like we bit him and it turned black.”

“Looks good,” Astrid agreed, pouring the vodka straight onto the piercing, listening to Holland’s answering cry with a smile on her face. “I’ve got the  _ itch _ today, Athos.”

“Do we need to go find a body?” Athos asked, tilting his head. Astrid licked vodka straight off of Holland’s chest, and let a little more dribble onto him, dragging her tongue up the side of his neck. She took another drink from the bottle, then leaned over to give Holland an open-mouthed kiss. Athos watched him swallow what he was given.

“Later,” She said in a breathy half-whisper. She’d left a smear of red from her lipstick on his chest, and rested her palm against it, smearing it further. “I can take care of finding the body myself this time. You stay here with him. He should have someone stay with him tonight. But first…” She raised an eyebrow. “Between us?”

“Please,” Holland said softly, pleading.  _ Maybe _ , Athos thought with a lick of joy like pleasure straight up his spine,  _ he’ll cry again tonight, when he’s just with me, after she’s gone. He cries for me more than Astrid. That means he trusts me more. Maybe he’ll love me more, too.  _ “Please, don’t-”

Astrid raised an eyebrow and fed him more vodka from the bottle. "Shush. Drink 'til you like it."

“He always likes it in the end,” Athos said. “Do you want to go first, or should I?”

“No turns, tonight, I think. He should have us at the same time.” She had a mouth full of sharp teeth when she smiled, his Astrid-twin, his north star, the first thing he’d loved in a world that he loved so, _ so _ much. “After all, it’s our six-month anniversary.”

“One day,” Athos whispered in Holland’s ear, “you’ll love me so much you can’t even bear to be out of my sight. You did so good tonight, Holl. Now let’s get you on your knees.” **   
**


	12. The Green Saints and Fucked Up Gods (Prompt: Dreams)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Day 12's Prompt, Dreams, I revisited the Cyborg AU from an earlier prompt! No real trigger warnings here, nothing too violent happens.

_ “Luc, I want to see you again. Please, come back, I miss you.” _

It's not real. It’s not _ really _ a dream, either.

Luc knows that, deep down, the way he knows about the needle in his arm feeding him saline solution and nutrients to keep him alive, plus the drugs to keep him half-conscious and helpless, the way he knows the cloth-lined restraints that tie his wrists and his ankles to the hospital bed in this strange featureless bright room deep within the White. He knows it the way he knows Holland is sitting next to him with one of those black gloves removed and what passes for his left hand is a mess of wires plugged into the port at the back of Luc's neck.

_ “You’re not answering me. I can’t get through to you. It’s been almost four years, Luc, I miss you so much, please… why did you leave me?” _

It's not a dream, but he can't wake up.

The Danes did not take him to their own stronghold, but instead to a building that looked like a ruin of an old skyscraper, down and down and down until they came here, underground. In the Sea, you’d be the tunnels by the time you went this deep, the warrens where no one rules. Here in the White, it’s still part of the same building. 

And it’s all owned by the Danelaw Group.

He hasn’t been completely awake in a month, maybe two. Sometimes the port in his neck is for pain, and he screams for hours while Astrid and Athos speak to him, and their voices are so loud. They speak louder than his heart, than his breath, than his thoughts. They promise and cajole and threaten, and their voices are _so fucking loud._

They speak louder than his screams.

Holland smiles.

At other times, the port is for feeding him stims, keeping him high and blissed out, not even struggling any longer, just riding wave after wave after wave of the pleasure-impulses being fed to his neural implants, new ones installed by Astrid Dane, and she has a switch, wherever she is. Some days she turns the stims on and he can't fight it, there _is _no fighting all the synthetic chemicals his mind is bathing in. On those days Holland sits next to him, impassive, always impassive, watching the dilation of his pupils, the constriction of his breath, the whispered begging for more, for someone to touch him, for someone to love him, for _more stims, please, by the saints, give me more stims_ when the high finally fades.

On the worst days, the port in his neck is for persuasion, and then he sees Rhy, or his crew, or anyone the memories suggest he cares about. The Danes drink him in, watch his life through his own eyes like the vids they sell in the Sea. He never sees them, but he doesn't have to; they're hooked in, they are his connecting network. They tear him apart searching for crumbs of information that they can make a profit off of, and fuck, they find so much.

He's been a pirate for nearly four years, after all, and he was damn good at being a pirate long before they kicked him out of the Red... it had just been in secret, then. 

The Danes know names, now. They know faces, and locations, and past jobs he’s done, information and resources he’s pulled for clients. They know Lila is _Antari-_class, and they will hunt her now. They know Stross worships the green saints, the eco-martyrs from before the corporations killed them all. They know about Hastra and the purity priests giving him sanctuary when he was first kicked out of the Red.

They know Rhy.

They know about how Luc thought he was gorgeous from the moment they met. They know how quickly Luc fell in love with him, what his favorite foods are, that KL never leaves his side _even when Luc really wants him to. _They know all about their love and what Rhy looks like naked and all the sweet things he and Luc have said to each other. They know everything, and they take knowledge with no mercy, but they cannot find Rhy’s codes, and that is the only hope Luc has left.

Luc hid those so deep inside himself even Holland’s _ Antari _enhancements cannot force him to give it up - and they can't kill him for them, because the self-destruct code is the only original enhancement they can't touch, and he'll die if they try and take the codes with him.

On the days they tear through his memories, Holland’s face is empty, until he sees KL, when his face twists, almost unnoticeably, with an enduring jealousy, something Luc can't quite name but that looks like grief. On those days, he remembers that Holland is human.

Today is one of the days the Danes want Holland to love them, and it's infecting the connection Holland has opened up, the worm that burrows through the twists and folds of his brain. Luc keeps catching himself thinking _ they're so strong _ and _ the White is so lucky they came here, _having to remember which thoughts are Holland’s Dane-fed hallucinations and which are his own.

It's not a dream.

He can't wake up.

Holland is careful, and methodical, and it does not hurt. It doesn't hurt in a way that Luc thinks is on purpose, he thinks Holland must be trying to make it painless, to give him what mercy he's allowed. The memories are an ocean and Holland is holding his head under the water while he searches for what the Danes are looking for, but it doesn’t hurt. 

_ they are special they are better than us i am so grateful they chose me i am better now i am stronger now i have been made better i have been made theirs and that is what i want _

No, that's Holland again.

Only the _ Antari _class can do what Holland does to him. They are the only ones connected, even if by a thin thread, to the OSARON network, the AI that went rampant and killed off the Black for good, after the bombs failed to take its power out of commission. 

OSARON-connected _ Antari _ enhancements give you the ability to infiltrate neural processes at the lowest levels at digital speeds. It’s mind control, of a sort. 

Magic, they call it, those who cannot use it.

Not everyone can take the OSARON AI on and live. _ Antari- _class cyborgs are rare because most people who try to get the enhancement fry inside their skulls like eggs on hot pavement in the Black, where the network still rules the ruined streets and presides over heaps of bones, where the air stinks of burning underground fires that never go out.

Holland is as still as a statue next to him. The wires that connect them are all the wrong colors, green and yellow and blue. They should be black, like Lila, or white, like the Danes.

Red, like KL. 

“I will never have a red wire,” Holland says out loud, no emotion in his voice. “I don’t belong to the corporations.”

“You belong to worse,” Luc forces out through numb lips. 

“I know.”

_ "I love you," Rhy says to him, and his eyes are sparkling dark and his curly black hair falls over his eyes and Luc would do anything to touch him again. _

It's not a dream. He can't wake up.

_ i do not want to love them i am so lucky they made me love them it was my fault i should have known the house always wins i am so lucky to serve i love them so much i do not want to love them _

He can’t stop Holland’s thoughts from infecting his. He can barely remember whose subjugation belongs to who.

"What is the code for Rhy Maresh's personal quarters?" Holland asks, and the human part of his voice is stronger. The wires from his hand burrow deeper, and the ocean is wide and it's Rhy reaching in to pull him up, give him air. But he can’t get a grip until Rhy has the code.

"The water is wiiiiiide," Luc sings, in a dry, croaking voice. "I can't get o'er..." It's an old song Stross sings sometimes. It helps him remember which of the people in his head is him. 

"Sssshhhhh," Holland says, almost tenderly. "I can stop anytime, Alucard. All you have to do is give me the codes to get into Rhy's room."

_ "Come back to me, Luc," Rhy is saying and he can see his lips moving but he can't hear his voice any longer. "I'll see you again. I'll be yours." _

They've been here for so long. Holland never moves except to give progress reports to the Danes. Luc's arms are strapped down, he pulled the needle out of his arm too many times when Holland disconnects and isn't in control.

"So you admit it," Luc mumbles out loud, his lips are cracked and bleeding. He wants Rhy so badly, wants to feel the warmth of him in his arms, wants to wake up next to him smiling. He doesn’t want to be in the Sea anymore. He doesn’t want to be a pirate. He just wants to go home.

Home to his purity prince, his unenhanced love, the boy trapped in the tallest tower, his Rhy.

_ Rhy tilts his head, teeth flashing white, holding out his hand. “Admit what?” _

"You admit that you're mine." 

_ “I love you, Luc.” _

“I miss you so much.” He can barely force out the words.

"Give me the code," Holland says, with falsified, forced impatience. Luc can tell it's fake because the machine voice is stronger when the words are Dane words and not his own. His stims have been running on low levels ever since they brought him here and Holland on low stim is irritable, uncertain, prone to anger. 

This is not a dream, but it feels like one, and Rhy is here, and Luc would give up anything to see him again.

Holland’s thoughts are infecting his and he is drowning. 

_ the code need the code just need the code the code and they’ll turn my stims back on hurts it hurts don’t want to smile need the code need them to stop want them to stop _

_ love them so much they are so strong the world they will make is so much better please turn this off i don’t want to think this _

_ so strong love them love _

This is not a dream.

Luc opens his mouth, and the code is on his lips and he thinks there is no one so strong as Astrid and Athos Dane, he loves them so much-

_ no that's holland not me (they are so strong) which one of us is which (kl help me) i don't remember any longer (kl help) _

_ help me someone save me (rhy i miss you) someone take this out of my head (i love you) i never wanted to do any of the things i’ve done (which one of us is holland) someone save me from myself _

**i can't wake up**

_ ****(kl help) _

_ love them so much _

_ (kl) _

**please holland stop**

_ love _

_ (help) _

_ don’t want to serve them _

_ (KL) _

**h**olland which one of us is me i can't remember which of us is me****

_ help _

_ (KL HELP ME) _

He can’t take this any longer, he can’t take Rhy in his dreams and Holland in his mind, he cannot take the hateful servitude, he cannot take the adoration they force into Holland's mind against his will, he cannot take being strapped down, he cannot take the things Athos and Astrid tell him they will do to him if he ends up useless except for the body he's in. He cannot survive this any longer. “Please,” He whispers, and his mouth is bleeding, he can taste the copper, his chapped lips have split. 

_ i never wanted to hurt anyone i thought i could protect the white i thought i could be something better than this _

**i'll give you what you want just please stop**

_ (kl) _

_ kl help me remember me we knew each other before remember me help me kl kl kl kl kl _

**which one of us is me**

_ (RHY HELP ME) _

_ love them so much i am so lucky they found me i am so glad to serve love them love _

_ please make it stop i never wanted them i hate what they make me do _

_ kl kl kl kl kl _

_ kl _

_ kl had a different name before _

**i give up, please, i'll give you what you want**

Luc coughs, a rattling sound somewhere in his chest. Something’s come loose in there. Good thing he had his lungs and heart replaced with synthetics. “Please, I’ll tell you, just make it stop, I can’t be in your brain any longer, it’s awful.”

“I know,” Holland says softly. “I know what my mind is like.”

“How can you _ live _like that?”

“I’m usually stimmed up. It drowns me out."

"Shit, fuck, can you get me some if I have to listen to you again?"

The corner of Holland's mouth twitches, and with their connection Luc can feel it. It's the first time he's experienced Holland smiling when no one was screaming.

"What is the code?” His black _ Antari _eye is whirring quietly, the machinery behind the black hard at work in Luc’s brain.

There's guilt, but the waterfall of Holland's thoughts is threatening to fall on him again, and he can't do this. He can't do it any longer. "Are you going to kill him?"

"No," Holland replies. "They have no intentions of taking his life, not at all. He will live."

"Fine, okay... okay... 1... 12… 21… 3… 1… 18… 4...”

The door slams open with a crash.

Holland withdraws his wires too fast and Luc feels each disconnect as sudden agony bursting in fireworks behind his eyes, jerking against the restraints with a strangled scream.

He can _ feel _ Holland's fake smile, even as the _ Antari _ says mildly, "I am programmed to smile. And who are _ you?" _

Through the final connective wire, Luc hears Holland think, _oh thank the saints, someone has come to kill me._

This is not a dream.

Luc feels a request to open a local connection break past Holland's control, a comfortable presence underneath it, familiar as his own mind. He opens his eyes. The room is white and he can’t see much, his visual input is narrowed to a strip inside a well of dancing spots, but the request is flashing black.

_ She came for me. _

"Lila fucking Bard," she says from the door, her voice a beautiful snarl, and Luc opens the connection to let her in. “Do you know how hard it is to _navigate _in this rubble-infested hellhole?” His _Antari_ pirate is coded black like her soul and the right eye where the OSARON enhancements are installed, a color as deep as her loyalty. His blade, his right hand, the secret foul-mouthed saint hiding in plain sight. “Luc, get up.”

“Little tied down at the moment,” He says in a voice that’s more whisper than speech, rattling the restraints.

“Shit, really? Is there _ any man _ you end up with who _ doesn’t _tie you up in some way?”

“Sometimes I tie them first.”

“I cannot beg you both enough to shut up,” Holland said with the same mild nothing in his voice.

The neural implants installed by the Danes are secure, but they were not designed to withstand _ Antari _cyborgs. Lila reboots them, and for a moment he is blind and deaf and mute and barely breathing, then suddenly the visual input brightens and Luc sees, once again, the connections between all things.

He sees the OSARON network lingering behind and around Holland and Lila. He sees his own personal network, twined in black with Lila’s connection. Holland is no color at all.

Holland smooths the wrinkles out of his suit, stands up slowly, pulls a black leather glove back over a hand that is wires and metal and half-bleached bone. "You are making a mistake," he says calmly. "You cannot win this, _ Antari. _"

Lila grins. Her smile is sharp and only half her teeth are real, the others are repositories for extra memory and implants that wouldn’t fit inside her skull. He can see the wires gleaming along the side of her head where the hair is shaved, running down her neck to the port. "I know I can't beat you. That's why I brought a friend."

Luc's vision is still blurry, but there is someone else here. Another request for a local connection opens, and it takes him a second to recognize this one. 

The connection request is red.

Red for love.

Red for Rhy.

"_ You _," Holland says. His voice is all machine, and Luc hears an understated fury in its shriek that is all Athos Dane. Underneath that, though, he hears the faintest hint of humanity, and in Holland’s true voice there is a question, and hope.

"It's been awhile, Holland," KL replies, in a voice that is almost - nearly - gentle.

"You know my name," Holland says. There is a shriek of feedback, the anger of the Danes rattling through the implants in Luc's skull, and he groans, helpless against the pain. Lila does something, and the pain fades as quickly as it came. "Please, KL. What's my name?"

KL pauses. He stopped being classified as a person years ago, once he surpassed 60% of him being machine-made. He is wearing a suit nearly identical to Holland's except for the deep scarlet color, shining with signals, and the same black leather gloves. Red hair, red suit, one blue eye and one black one, a neck that is more wires than skin. 

KL looks even less human than Holland, but in KL’s case, it was_ his _decision.

"Vosijk," KL says, finally. "You had a name. It was Vosijk."

Holland slumps, just a little, and Luc _watches _the programming take over, as he slowly straightens back up, spine like steel, the hint of expression in his face suddenly fades back to nothing. "That doesn't matter any longer."

"I had a name, too," KL says, and there's a question there, too.

"I remember it."

"So tell me."

"I can't."

KL just... nods, and his eyes - or at least the blue one, anyway, the one that's still mostly human - go to Luc.

“You got my message,” Luc says hoarsely. “You got it. You gave it to Rhy.”

Rhy's cyborg bodyguard smirks at him, lifts one black-gloved hand in a wave. “I got it. I gave it to him. Besides, the purity priests were _begging us_ to take Lila off their hands before she set something on fire again.”

Lila rolls her eyes. “That was _ just the one tapestry-” _

“Hastra was _ very offended _. Let me in, Luc.” 

Luc accepts the connection request, and sees the red threads around him forcing out Holland’s colorless connection, forcing out the Danes. He yanks at the restraints that hold him to the bed, but he’s too weak from weeks of not eating, he can barely move, can still feel the needle in his arm pumping in the downers that have kept him docile and drowsy. “Help.” 

“Give us a sec,” Lila says. “We have an asshole to take out first.”

“We’re not going to_ take him out _,” KL says with a quiet confidence. “We’ll disable him a little. I don’t want to take him out.”

“That’s a dumb fucking plan. Look at what he did to _ Luc. _”

“You think he had a fucking choice?” 

“He’ll _ come after us. _You can’t seriously tell me you don’t want to kill-”

"What are you_ doing here? _ " Holland's one green eye dances back and forth between the two _ Antari _he faces. Luc has never noticed before, but his regular voice has the faintest trace of an accent.

KL smiles. "You have something that belongs to my brother, and I have been ordered to return it. My associate here will be taking Luc home. I will be taking _ you. _”

“Me?” Holland’s voice is wholly human, and it shakes.

Luc wants to cry, but nothing happens, and he wonders if the Danes replaced his tear ducts, too, after he passed out from the installation pain. Or maybe they've installed programming that means he can only cry when they want him to. That is exactly the sort of thing those white bastards would do.

“You.” KL’s voice is softer still. The plates on his face crack, just a little, and show the wiring underneath. "Holland, we're the same under our skin. I don't want to fight you."

"I am programmed to resist any attempts to liberate me," Holland replied. The air crackled with signals that Luc could not grasp onto, the _ Antari _codes and the OSARON and the Danes fighting for supremacy. "I am programmed to love them."

"Do you want to?" KL cocks his head, a little too far to one side. The _Antari _are all like that; the parts of them that are people buried under the parts of them that aren't.

"What I want has never mattered."

"It matters to me."

"Oh fuck it all," Lila groans. "We're actually going to _ rescue him?" _

Luc laughs. Thank all the green saints and fucked up gods, _this is not a dream._


	13. Third Date (Holland/Kell Modern AU) For Prompt: Feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holland Vosijk, Grad Student, and Kell Maresh, Undergrad have their third date - this time at a bookstore/bar/coffeeshop. 
> 
> Wallow in the cuteness.

Holland picked the location this time, but Kell did his research, and he had a small wrapped box sitting in his lap to prove it. Winter break had been too busy for the two of them to really see each other, and when he’d texted Holland to ask if he wanted to meet up somewhere, the answer had come back in less than seven minutes.

That was even faster than Luc answered Rhy, which Kell might have been smug about if he didn’t know that that was mostly because Luc literally never knew where his phone was and half the time Delilah Bard had it for some reason that no one ever seemed able to explain.

"This is the dorkiest thing you've ever done," Rhy said as they pulled up in front of Joe’s, the combination used bookstore/bar/coffeeshop Holland picked for tonight. Kell could have driven himself, of course, but Rhy had insisted on bringing him, and he didn’t put up much of a fight.

He and Rhy had done almost everything together their entire lives, ever since he’d come home the first day still wearing the awful too-big Day-Glo shirt and threadbare shorts from the foster home. Ever since, it had always been the two of them, everywhere they went.

Well, except for school, where Rhy went to the priciest prep school in the state and Kell was tutored at home, alone. Except for Rhy being  _ informed  _ he would be majoring in business administration and doing an internship at Maresh Corp, grooming him to take over when Maxim retired, while Kell could choose his own major and career as long as he agreed (Maxim made him sign a  _ contract _ ) to work for Rhy if he ever asked him to, no questions asked, drop everything he wants and is and exist for Rhy instead.

Except for Rhy being  _ Rhy Maresh _ , heir to the largest privately-owned pharmaceutical company in the United States and subject of several magazine articles all about his  _ bright future _ , and Kell being a publicity stunt with a pulse.

Why had he picked up the phone when Emira called earlier? It always ruined his day, but he never, ever let her go to voicemail, and he would never understand why he kept answering her calls.

"You're scowling again," Rhy said, a little gently. "Are you thinking about Mom and Dad? You always do that face when you think about them. Look, fuck ‘em. Calm your face. You’re on a date."

"Just thinking," Kell said, tightening his grip on the box. It was wrapped in plain sky blue paper with a perfectly-tied bow made from a sheer white ribbon. Kell had no idea how to tie a bow or even wrap presents; Rhy had turned out to be an expert at it, just like he was an expert at everything else, and had done it for him.

"Well, stop thinking and start enjoying your date. Seriously, I can't believe you did this. It was  _ such  _ a dorky idea."

If Rhy wanted to drive him to meet Holland (with the understanding he would absolutely  _ not  _ need a ride home), he didn't mind. They'd barely seen each other all week, too busy with classes since they'd come back from break, and Kell hadn't missed that Rhy had taken the long way here tonight, to buy them a few more minutes of time to hang out.

Rhy had insisted on overseeing his outfit this time, too. Joe's was a nicer place than anywhere else they'd met so far, and Kell hadn't even fought much about  _ that _ . Kell shifted around in his seat, uncomfortable in the new black pants Rhy had bought him, the dark blue button-up. Their compromise was his shoes, the usual beat-up tennis shoes he wore everywhere he went, and his shirt - tonight, peeking through the button-up (he’d left four buttons open on purpose), he was wearing a Joy Division shirt, which Rhy informed him no one would recognize, and he had informed him right  _ back _ that he didn’t care.

"He and I didn't do Christmas presents, I didn't... I don't know if he even does Christmas, I never thought to ask. And besides that, you're always telling me Holland and I _ are _ both dorks, so-"

"No," Rhy said smoothly. "I'm always calling you  _ nerds _ . There's a difference." He leaned over, giving Kell a kind of one-armed hug, fiercely tight, then pulling back to give him one more inspection. "I'm going out with Luc tonight. You know the drill; call if you need me, otherwise I'll see you when I see you. Going back to our place after by yourself or together? Should I go to Luc's?"

Kell smiled, nervously. "Depends on if he likes what's in the box."

"Well, it's, as I said, the dorkiest thing you've ever done. Based on how things have gone so far, I can only imagine he'll  _ love it _ . When you told me you wanted to get him a present I was really worried you meant, like, a fucking  _ mixtape  _ with your shitty music on it.”

“My music isn’t shitty! Holland  _ likes it. _ ”

“No, Holland likes  _ you.  _ He listens to fucking  _ death metal,  _ Kell. He’s not into your sad bastard shit.”

“He can like both.” 

"Look, I'll tell Luc I'm going home with him. Should I tell him you said hey?"

"Tell him I said he can go fuck himself, and I didn't appreciate him using my shampoo."

"Yeah, no, I didn't like that, either." Rhy wrinkled his nose. "It's really weird when your boyfriend comes into your room smelling like your brother."

"Yeah. So tell him to go fuck himself."

"Absolutely not," Rhy said, with his bright shining smile. "That's  _ my _ job. Now go on in, he's probably already here."

"We said we'd meet at 8:00, it's only 7:50 now."

"Yeah, but he thinks you're the shit. He's probably already here so he gets to see you walk in."

It was Kell's turn to wrinkle his nose. "I don’t think so.”

"Kell. Discover some self-confidence inside that endless well of anxiety you carry around everywhere. He likes your weird hair-"

"Hey, I can't help my hair!"

"You could if you ever, literally  _ ever _ , tried. He likes your weird clothes-"

" _ You _ picked these out!"

"Ugh, I know, and watch him hate your outfit for the first time when it's actually decent for once. He likes all your weird you-ness, and you should trust that for once." Rhy sighed. "You never believe anyone can really like you, do you know that? You think you don’t deserve it, that we’re lying to you."

“Do I?” 

“Yes.” Rhy looks sad, for a second, and Rhy  _ never _ looks sad. Then he brightens, and waves Kell away. "Go inside. I'll see you tomorrow, or the next day."

Rhy drives away as soon as he steps out, the box clutched in his hands. Joe's takes up the entire inside of a small brick building just outside of downtown, and he opens the wooden door with some effort, the cold winter wind trying to push it closed again. A blast of heat hits him in the face as he enters, bookshelves on either side of him.

There are books  _ everywhere. _

The shelves line the walls, two stories of bookshelves, along with winding metal stairs to little half-floors, a balcony that lets you look right down with decorative iron railings all along it bent into roses, vines, and flowers. There are shelves turning every inch of floor space into narrow little paths, with open spots for couches, tables, and armchairs.

Standing at the bar, directly in front of him, is Holland Vosijk, who of course looks absolutely goddamn  _ amazing _ and all he's wearing is a black sweater and dark jeans and his boots, those same boots, the boots Kell has dreams about. He’s got a five o’clock shadow and Kell has a sudden, wildly irrational urge to just walk up and touch it.

"Hey." Kell's never going to get over that voice, the warm gravel of it, how low it is. Holland smiles at him, a little nervously, and then his eyes drop to the box Kell is holding in his hands. "Oh. Oh, shit, did we decide to do presents? I didn't know we were... there, yet." Kell's heart drops a little, and it must have shown on his face, because Holland says quickly, "I’m sorry I don’t have anything. I didn’t know we were  _ that  _ kind of dating yet."

_ Oh God, he's going to hate getting a present, isn't he? I read him wrong. You're just seeing him, Kell, why did you think you could do this? Fuck. I fucked it up. I fucked it up again. _

Holland sighed, pushing his glasses back up in the unconscious motion that Kell has watched him perform about a hundred times already. He dreams about that, too. "I know I've been really buried in my stuff lately and it's been a few weeks since we could really-"

"No, we didn't agree to presents. I'm sorry. I can just hold onto it-"

"No," Holland says, a little sharply. "I want to see it. What did you get?"

"I just... I'll show you why I got it in a while. Can we go ahead and order?"

Kell gets something different, and he sees Holland look at him with surprise when he doesn't just order a caramel macchiato, when he asks for coffee with Irish cream instead. Funny, he thinks, how he'd thought for so long that Holland didn't notice anything about him, and he'd already known Kell's coffee order by heart before they'd ever done more than just talk about school.

_ People are allowed to like you.  _ Rhy's voice in the back of his mind, insufferably smug as usual.

Holland surprises him, too; he asks for a cappuccino, and then smiles at Kell, a little shame-faced. "This is the only place that makes cappuccinos the way I like," He says, as though he owes Kell an explanation, and Kell wonders if that means something, if it's something he should read into.

Holland is the one to suggest going up to the second floor, and he carries Kell's drink for him as they walk up the wrought-iron stairs, wind around endless bookshelves and the smell of old books, binding glue, and gradually yellowing paper and leather.

Holland picks a spot in the very back corner, where there isn't much to see, just a coffee table and an old couch surrounded on all four sides by bookshelves labeled  _ Folklore & Mythology _ , only a narrow path between them letting them slide through.

"This place is amazing," Kell says, and he's rewarded with Holland's smile, and feels his fingers grip tighter onto the wrapped box. He knows Holland will like what's in there, he knows, but there's still the flutter of fear in the back of his mind, the anxious whisper of  _ maybe he won't, maybe you're going too fast, maybe you shouldn’t have done this, maybe you’ll ruin everything. _

The couch envelops them and it feels like velvet, a dark rich green faded with time, with shiny spots worn into its surface from decades of people sitting to read. Joe's has been here, in some form, since the 70's, and the couch looks like it's probably been here since at least 1992.

"This is my favorite place in town, and it's open until 2 am when Joe feels like it. When the twins are having their parties, I usually come here for as long as I can. I was just worried that you wouldn’t be into a bookstore date."

"I  _ read _ ," Kell says, a little defensively. "I used to read constantly. I just do so much reading for school right now that it kind of takes over."

Holland laughs - he loves the way he laughs, in that quiet deep voice. Holland laughs carefully, the way he does everything. "I hear that."

There's a silence, but it's not awkward, as the two of them sip their drinks. Their silences aren't as uncomfortable and awkward as they used to be, and maybe he should be wondering if  _ that _ means anything, too. After a second, Kell shifts around to put his back against the arm of the couch, lifting his legs so they're resting across Holland's lap. He waits, just for one second, to see if Holland will ask him to move, but all he does is rest one hand on top of Kell's ankle.

"Open the box," He says, keeping his mug in his hands, enjoying the warmth. Holland raises an eyebrow, leaning forward to pick it up, looking it over first, shaking it a little. There’s a heavy shift inside the box, but no rattle. "Don't just  _ stare _ at it, Holl, open it."

"I like when you call me Holl," Holland says softly, the first time he's said anything like that. 

“You do?”

“Yeah. Just when  _ you _ do it. If Luc ever calls me Holl again I’ll punch him, I don’t care if he’s drunk.” He unwraps the bow Rhy had so carefully tied, slides the ribbon off of it. "There's _ no way  _ you wrapped this, Kell."

"Damn straight. I can't wrap presents to save my life, every time I try I end up using three times more paper than I need and a whole roll of tape. Emira makes me buy all my Christmas presents for them at stores where they do  _ professional gift-wrapping  _ so that my stuff doesn't end up ruining the family Christmas photos again _ . _ I had Rhy wrap this one, though, he's really good at it."

"Kell..." Holland's hands pause on the paper. "Everything you ever say about your family makes me wonder..."

There's another silence, and Kell stares down into his coffee. "Wonder what?"

He knows how this will go, how these conversations always end.  _ I wonder why they took you in, when there were so many others? What made them choose you? What about you was special? Why aren’t you more grateful? Why don’t you dress like them? Why are you so  _ difficult  _ why don’t you smile more in photos why would you choose to be an anthropologist when you could go into business to be better at helping Rhy why haven’t you tried harder why aren’t you more like your brother why why why  _

When he’d been a kid, he’d thought all that would go away when he was an adult. Now that he was an adult, he realized that maybe all the adults had the same kinds of voices in the backs of their heads, and everyone was just trying to drown them out.

"It makes me wonder how you turned out so great."

He looks up, startled, sure he’s heard wrong. “What?”

Holland's eyes are right on his, and the way the frames of his glasses and his sweater are the exact same shade of black shifts something inside Kell's mind, knocks him off-balance. "How they treat you like that and you're still... you. It's just really impressive."

“Holland, you live with the  _ Danes.  _ You literally wake up each day in an actual drug den with sociopaths. You win the oppressive family Olympics.”

Holland waves one hand dismissively, and Kell wants to reach out and grab it, but his hands are around his mug and by the time he thinks to put it down, the moment is gone. “They’re not so bad, if you’re family. Once Dad got married to their mom… I think ten years or so ago… they had - I kid you not - a  _ meeting  _ about me and decided I counted now, and they’re not nearly as bad with me as they are with everyone else. Believe it or not, they’re pretty supportive of everything I do. Just don’t, um, ever be alone with them.”

“Right. Except that they keep _ trying  _ to get me alone with them.”

“Yeah, they  _ really  _ want to know more about the people I date. Potentially in really gross ways. Look, my point was just… I’m just really impressed by you.”

"Um." Kell doesn't know what to say, what to do with his hands, where to look. No one has ever said anything like this to him before, not ever. Not even Rhy. Eventually he settles on a weak "thanks," and hopes that Holland never says anything like that again, even as he simultaneously wishes he would say it every single day, forever.

Kell tears wrapping paper to shreds, leaves a pile of wreckage and debris that Emira cleans up - or has Mrs. Verona clean up - with a heavy sigh, every time. Holland, though, carefully peels back tape, slowly folds back the paper, and ends with it neatly folded next to him. He glances up and notices Kell watching him with an expression of awe. “I had to save wrapping paper to reuse when I was a kid,” He says, apologetically. “Never lost the habit.”

Unwrapped, it’s just a plain white box. It gives nothing away.

Kell swallows hard, his heart in his throat, hoping this was the right thing. Hoping he hasn't gone farther than Holland wants him to.

Inside, wrapped inside a little bit of blue tissue paper, is a book. Holland blinks at it, a few times, then sits slowly back, staring. His glasses slip a little down his face, but he still doesn't move. "Where did you get this?" He asks, and his voice is hoarse, the way it was when Kell held a cherry between his teeth. He looks up and there is an intensity in his face that Kell is a little afraid of. "This isn't going to be published for  _ months,  _ where did you get this?"

"Maxim knows the guy that owns the publishing company. I had him get me a copy for you."

" _ 'The Blood That Heals: Medieval Executions and Human Sacrifice in Europe' _ ," Holland read the title in a hushed voice, the way people might speak the words to a prayer. He sinks back into the couch, picking the book up, running his fingers back and forth over the cover, as though the words would change if he lingered too long in one place. "This isn't scheduled to be published until right before I present, Kell."

“Can you still use it?”

“Yeah, I. Yes. I can, absolutely. I just.” He looks back up. “Thank you. I’ve been waiting on this forever, this is… it’s going to be such a huge… I just.” He raked a hand back through his hair. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad you like it.” He pulls his feet away from Holland’s lap, leaning forward a little, tilting his head to look at the book himself. “I was really nervous about it.”

“Why the  _ fuck  _ would you be nervous about getting me  _ an advance copy of the most important book I’ve been wanting to cite _ and had no access to?”

“I don’t know. I’m always nervous.”

“I just. Kell. This is going to be  _ so helpful,  _ the guy who wrote this book is an  _ expert  _ on medieval executions. I’ve seen him speak. I’ve  _ paid money to fly to another state  _ to see him speak.” He pauses. “Well, the Danes paid for the hotel room. At least I _ think  _ they paid...”

“I’m going to assume that’s good.” He tries to sound like he’s teasing, but Holland’s face is too serious for that, and the tone doesn’t quite match. 

“It is! I have a whole section on this. There used to be this… belief, that if you were sick, or blind, you could be healed if you used a certain kind of blood - it had to come from someone in the prime of their life, who didn’t die from sickness. They’d go to the executions and try to get their hands in the blood, smear it on each other over the afflicted places.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Right? In the end, all those ostensibly Christian people were trying to perform  _ magic  _ with human blood. We changed the words about it, called it something else, but that’s all it was. Basically my whole point is all about how we’ve never stopped trying to perform blood magic, just started changing the language we use around it or what powers we ascribe  _ to _ blood. I pretty much start with the earliest signs we’ve seen of drained corpses - and some things that are really implied, because it's not like we can ask them - and go right up through the beginning of modern medical science in Germany and the rest of Europe. And this book - I’m going to be able to cite  _ so much of this book  _ for the section about medieval-” He cuts himself off. “I’m sorry. You don’t care about any of that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Holland snorts.

“I  _ do. _ ”

“Why?”

“Because  _ you  _ care about it, and the idea of blood magic is really cool. I  _ want  _ to know everything you know about it. I want to know everything about  _ you. _ "

Holland shifts around on the couch, and Kell opens his mouth to say something more, he has no idea what, but by the time he’s trying to think of a reply Holland’s warm hand is sliding around the back of his neck and he is already kissing him.

Every thought flies out of Kell’s head, all the nervousness replaced by the heat of lips still warm and tasting like coffee, the slight scratch of the stubble against his face, the way he smells like that cologne he only uses sometimes, the one his stepmother brought back from a visit to Iceland. His nerves light up all at once. He can hear, distantly, the buzz of people talking downstairs, the soft scrape of books being moved into or pulled off of shelves. Holland pushes him back against the arm of the couch, the pressure of his legs settling on either side of Kell’s. There’s no part of them that doesn’t seem to be touching right now, and he doesn’t give a damn about anything but this.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts. Holland slides his shirt up a little bit and both of  _ his _ hands have slid up and around his back. Holland’s hand is laying flat against his stomach, and his fingers are long and his hand is warm and they’re not exactly in private but with Holland’s mouth on his, the way their tongues feel against each other, it’s incredibly hard to care.

Eventually a man and woman stumble into their section and  _ immediately leave  _ with very loud apologies _ ,  _ and the two men pull apart like they’ve been burned, embarrassed.

“Oh my God. We’re grown-ass adults,” Kell says, with a face probably redder than his hair, slowly leaning over to hide his head in his hands, folding over himself, trying to calm down. He still feels like his skin is stretched too thin over his bones, like he’s transparent and Holland could look right through him.

He’s a little afraid to stand up.

“Yes,” Holland says, sitting back and laying one ankle over the other knee, shifting uncomfortably to move his sweater's hem a little lower over his hips, a hand over his eyes.

“Making out like teenagers.”

“Yes.”

“Getting  _ caught like teenagers. _ ”

“Yes.”

“We are  _ grown ass adults. _ ”

“You said that already.”

Silence, drawn out between them. Kell tells himself what he thinks every time he and Holland are in the same room, when his heart is beating too hard and he’s sure he’s about to fuck it up. He’s always sure he’s going to fuck things up, the nervousness never leaves. But when he’s nervous, he thinks:

_ Now or never, Maresh.  _

Kell sits back up, takes a deep breath, and says, the words all in a rush as fast as he can speak, “Do-you-want-to-talk-about-it-more-at-my-place?”

“You want to talk about my  _ paper  _ at your apartment?”

_ Jesus. Maybe I  _ do _ make him stupid. _

“That’s the way I’m hoping it_ starts_,” He said, and his heart is a hammer in his chest until Holland smiles.


	14. Kitta Grau and the Devil (Prompt: Fairy Tales)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is another installment of Serial Killers on a Spree with the Danes and their captive, Holland. Includes implied/referenced abuse/murder/sexual assault, for those who need trigger warnings. Probably NSFW just for language/topics. 
> 
> P.S. Kitta Grau and the Devil is a very real Swedish fairy tale, although the Danes have... embellished it a bit here.

“I will speak you a story, Athos Marjorisson and Holland Danskakärlek, beloved of Kings," Astrid Dane said, her voice lilting and sing-song. “First, an offering to the old gods, the bloody ones, the gods from which we are formed.” She poured a little of the vodka in her aluminum camping cup into the fire, as though performing a ceremony. 

Earlier she’d had on the heavy red sweater, oversized on her wiry frame, but the fire was burning too hot for that. She wore black leggings and a black sports bra, the contrast with her pale skin cutting her in sections against the night's heavy darkness. She’d pulled her hair back in braids today, twisted around her head like pale ghostly snakes, and Holland thought she looked gorgeous and terrible.

Athos smiled. “An offering,” He repeated, and poured a little of the dark beer from his cup into the fire, too. Holland had nothing to offer, and so he just tried to be very still.

Athos and Astrid sat in camping chairs stolen right out of the back of somebody’s car at an REI a couple of states ago, with those little metal cups in the mesh cupholder and bottles of Astrid’s favorite liquor lined up at her feet, an array of colors.

_ “It’s a rainbow,” She’d told Holland, totally serious, as they stood under the harsh fluorescent lights and he watched through his sunglasses as she picked new bottles out, one by one. “If you don’t drink the rainbow, what’s the goddamn point, darling?” _

Holland sat on the hard, cold ground between Athos’s legs, knees pulled up to his chest with his arms around them, pretending not to notice Athos's knuckles gently grazing the back of his neck. 

He told himself he would not think about how Athos was only wearing a pair of jeans. He told himself he could not think about how he hated it out here, in the middle of nowhere, where they didn’t have to worry about anything they did to him drawing attention. He told himself he would not think about what they had done to him before, in the wilderness. He told himself that he had been good today, so they probably wouldn’t hurt him.

There was no chair for him. There never was. Instead, Holland always sat at her feet, or his.

“What does d-danska… kärlek mean?” He asked the question in a halting, quiet voice, and when she turned to look at him, those blue eyes so much colder in her face than in Athos’s lately, he froze. Athos’s hand did not stop its slow movement back and forth across the back of his neck. 

Astrid narrowed her eyes, and then she smiled, and the two halves of her face wore such different expressions that it was hard to believe she was human at all. “It means ‘Danes’ beloved’,” She answered. “Because you have no other name now. Because Athos loves you.”

“ _ We _ love you,” Athos corrected. “If one of us loves, so does the other.”

“Right.”

His last name was Vosijk, but they never used it, and sometimes - just for an hour or so at a time - he forgot it.

They’d given him a new earring, yesterday, at the very top of his right ear, a silver cuff that curves along with the shell of skin. There was something engraved on it he couldn’t read. It still hurt; the skin was still red and irritated, even though Astrid had already cleaned it out with things out of the bag they keep in the back of the truck. 

Holland tried not to wonder what the engraving on the ear cuff said. 

He tried to focus on the fact that it was only on his  _ ear _ and not to think too much about the spike of gratitude he felt that they had left the rest of him alone this time. One day, Astrid was going to run out of safe places to stick needles in him, and he’d begun to worry about where her next choice might be. 

“Look at me,” Astrid said softly, and Holland jerked his eyes up, forcing himself to do as he was told. He’d been good; he hadn’t said anything to anyone at all, not even when they stopped, not even when people spoke to him. She couldn’t possibly be angry with him. That same strange smile on her face, she said softly, “Are you our goddamn boyfriend  _ now _ ?”

He hesitated. There was a right way and a wrong way to answer things Astrid said, and he had gradually learned most of them by heart. It’d been months and months since Vegas, but she asked him the question, still, all the time. “Yes,” He said, finally, letting his left hand fiddle with the silver ring on his right ring finger. “Yes, I am, Astrid. Thank you, Astrid.” He let out a breath of relief when she looked away from him and back to the fire.

_ Learned helplessness,  _ he told himself,  _ is a survival skill.  _ He’d watched documentaries on abduction victims before. He  _ knew  _ all of this; but it made it no easier to hold on, in the moment.  _ Learned helplessness is a way to try and stay alive. The brain will make any adaptation it must to keep the heart beating. That’s all this is. Learned helplessness. _

_ Keep it together, Holland. _

Athos never stopped the gentle touch along the back of his neck, and Holland wanted to move, he wanted to move away so  _ badly,  _ but he didn’t dare. Instead, he tried to close his eyes, to pretend that Athos was not touching him, that Astrid’s eyes weren’t watching him like a predator, that he was not the focus of that careful calculation inside the icy blue.

Holland tried to pretend that he wasn’t afraid of them. He tried harder to pretend he wasn’t even more afraid of the idea of life without them.

It'd been more than a year. His apartment was gone. His job was  _ definitely _ gone. He never had much family and what he had to begin with was long gone by the time the Danes walked right in his front door. They’d murdered Ross, and that had been the only person close to him. Talya had been out of his life before they became part of it, thank God. 

He had a feeling if they knew how to find her, one of them would get the itch.

The truth he was hiding from was that he was scared to be alone, because he was never, ever alone any longer. Even when they went out together and left him in the hotels, they were still in the back of his head. He couldn’t run and he couldn’t get away from them, no matter how loud he turned up the TV. 

When they were gone, and it was just him, he got scared. He wanted them back, his heart pounding, frightened that he would do something wrong if they weren’t here and they’d come back and be angry with him. He needed them to remind him that he wouldn’t be hurt if he just did what they said, except for when they still hurt him anyway. 

Astrid and Athos Dane were the only things he had left.

_ It is not uncommon for the victim of an abduction to feel a sense of dependence on their abductor. The brain will do anything to keep the heart beating. The trick is to keep part of yourself intact, too. _

There was a tent, just at the edge of the place where the fire lights the night, colored muted black and white and red, just large enough for three. Holland had unrolled their bedding and set it up himself, earlier, put in his latest book and the booklight from Astrid, prepped the little campfire coffeepot and coffee packets to be ready in the morning. He’d taken out clothing for them to wear tomorrow, the toothbrushes and toothpaste, combs, everything they’d need. He had taken his time, moved slowly, made sure everything was perfectly neat. The longer it took, the more time they’d leave him alone. 

That wasn’t really why he volunteered to do the tent, though. 

The truth was that the longer it took, the longer he could distract himself from the reason they were this far out in the Montana wilderness. He’d listened to Astrid and Athos build their fire while he worked, and tried  _ no _ t to listen to the thing that they carried and laid down in the grass, hidden in the darkness outside the fire’s light. The thing that moved, sometimes, and sometimes made sounds he forced himself to be deaf to.

_ You’re not a victim any longer, you’re an accomplice. You haven’t even tried to help her.  _ The voice was Athos’s, warm and so damn sure, and Holland shivered. 

_ If I help her, he’ll stop loving me, and Astrid will name me a body, too. The brain wants to survive. I am doing this to survive, because one day I’ll get my chance. _

_ But a chance to do what? _

Parked next to the tent was the truck they’d brought the thing here in, huge and brand new and sparkling red with a black cover that hid everything in the back. The truck had no cab, and Holland had spent the past three days sandwiched between Astrid and Athos while they traded off their turns driving, telling him with hyena laughter to keep a straight face while they put their hands on him in the middle of the interstate, where anyone could have seen.

“Tell us a story, Astrid Marijorisdotter,” Athos said, and his deep voice had the same lilt, a hint of an accent.

He nudged Holland with one hand. Holland cleared his throat, then said all in a rush, “Tell us a story, Astrid,” and looked over his shoulder to make sure he said it right. When Athos smiled at him, and his hand shifted to curve around his shoulder, thumb rubbing gentle, soothing circles, Holland relaxed.

A little.

The thing shifted in the grass outside the firelight again, and there was a muffled groaning. Holland knew what it was, but he didn’t look. He couldn’t. If he looked, he’d want to help, and there was nothing he could do. 

She’d just had a run of bad luck, the girl outside the firelight. A run of bad luck, just like him, only this place here was where her bad luck ended, where his just kept going on and on and on.

_ Stop. If I think about her, I will start screaming and I will never, ever stop. _

“We will tell our story together,” Astrid said, a playful smile drifting across her lips, and Holland understood all at once that this was a sort of game, and he thought this must be what they were like as kids.

No less frightening, just in a different way.

“Together,” Athos agreed. “Right, Holland?”

“R-right.”

The fire was far larger than it needed to be just to make hot dogs and s’mores, burning so hot Holland was sweating until he took his shirt off, even here in Montana where spring is as frigid as Maryland was in winter. The fire had to be large, though, because they had something much bigger than firewood to burn.

Outside the flickering firelight, the trees seemed to lean in too closely. He could hear things out there, the animals whispering through underbrush, and he had no idea what even lived in Montana but he knew he didn’t want to meet it. Holland shifted back closer to Athos, his heart beating hard inside his chest.    


“It’s okay,” Athos murmured, running fingers through his hair, letting them trail alongside his face, finally down his neck and over his front, resting his hand over the collarbone piercing that had healed up surprisingly well, shockingly quickly, rolling his finger over the little black bits that reflected the flickering firelight. “It’s okay, relax, you’re okay.” 

Holland fought a mix of loathing and disgust and the tiniest bit of reassurance and gratitude, the teeniest little bit of something worse than that. Athos was better than Astrid.  _ Safer _ . Holland could not go out into the woods, but if he stayed right here Athos would take care of him and make sure Astrid didn’t hurt him… except when she really wanted to, and then it would happen anyway.

She wouldn’t kill him, though, not if Athos wanted him. Athos was kinder, just wanted someone to love him, just didn't understand what it was supposed to look like.

_ It is normal for an abduction survivor to feel sympathy and affection for their captor developing over time. The brain will do anything, anything, anything. _

_ My brain is doing anything to survive. _

There are things in the woods, lying in the grass waiting to be thrown into the fire and lurking just beyond it. There are things in the dark Holland is too afraid to face directly. There are things inside his own head that are getting a little worse every day.

_ Keep yourself together. They’re going to fuck up one day, and you’ll have another chance. _

_ To do what? Where would I go? I don’t have anything left but them and what they do to me. _

“I will tell you the story of Kitta Grau and the Evil One,” Astrid said, taking a big swig from her cup, passing it to Athos. He drank, too, then handed it to Holland, who drank the rest just to try and calm his racing heart.

Astrid moved the bottle over and Holland automatically refilled her cup and handed it back to her. His obedience was rewarded with one of her cold smiles, the ones that never reach her eyes. She leaned over - he hadn’t realized how close she was - and touched his face with the backs of her fingers. “Good boy,” She said, in a low voice. “I wish I could love you. Athos loves you  _ so much,  _ and I don’t love you at all.”

He looked away, back towards the fire, and let the heat burn at his face to hide the burst of rage and hatred he felt. Thank God, he could still hate them, but it was getting harder.

Athos put a couple of marshmallows on long sticks and after a second, Holland picked a stick up, too. He jammed two marshmallows onto the end, the motion difficult and awkward trying to do it with one hand only half-functional, and held them out towards the fire.

“One day,” Astrid began, projecting as though she had an audience of more than two, her blue eyes looking up into the night sky, at the thousands upon thousands of brilliantly shining stars, clearer out here in the wilderness than anywhere else. Before they built the fire, you could see the Milky Way winding above their heads. “One day the devil himself met Kitta Grau.”

“Who?” Holland frowned.

“Sssshhh,” Athos whispered, squeezing his shoulder a little, just enough to hurt. “You’ll like this. I get to be the devil.”

Astrid’s mouth twisted in a smirk, not exactly a snarl. When she spoke, she pitched her voice low and sultry, but with a ragged edge that threatened, always, to crack apart. “‘Where have you been, old man?’ asked Kitta Grau, for this evil woman knew the devil as one knows a lover, and she had not seen him in some time.”

“‘Well’, said the evil one, who loved Kitta Grau in return,” Athos said, turning his already deep voice into a malevolent rumble. Their voices seemed tailor-made for each other. Holland listened in fascination as his marshmallow grew warm and soft by the fire, began to blacken just a little, the way he liked. “‘I have been out to see the farm of one Aleksander Larsson, the newly wedded man. I have been three times already to sow hatred between he and his pretty wife, but they are in love, and think of each other too well.’”

“‘How stupid of you’, said Kitta Grau.” Astrid’s smile had gone dreamy. She looked over at Holland, offering him the cup again. He took it from her, trying not to let his fingers brush against hers. She was easier to hate than Athos. She was cruelty all the time, except for when she wasn’t, but Athos mixed it all up too much and kept saying it was love. “‘That is something I can do, and all I need is a few minutes alone with the man Larsson and wife.’”

“‘If you can do that,’ said the devil, ‘I will give you a splendid pair of shoes and my love.’”

“‘I have your love already,’ said Kitta Grau. She gave the devil a kiss, like this.” Astrid leaned over and Holland knew what she wanted and tilted his head back for her, letting her kiss him. Her mouth was cold and tasted like vodka, her perfume heady enough to make him feel drunker than he was already. She let her hand briefly graze his face, then sat herself back up. “‘To the devil’s pretty green eyes, she said, ‘I will accept your wager for the shoes, but I want the love of Aleksander Larsson, too, from the moment his pretty wife is dead. You must keep your word, my love’, for Kitta Grau loved the Evil One but her love was not always kind. The love of evil things never is.”

_ That’s the fucking truth,  _ Holland thought, but didn’t dare say.

“So Kitta Grau went to the farmstead of Aleksander Larsson, whose body she wanted along with his love,” Athos said, putting his hands up to the side of Holland’s face, forcing his head to tilt all the way back so he could kiss him as well. Athos was warmer than Astrid, just a little, and his mouth was harder than hers and softer all at once too. 

Athos was harder to hate.

Athos did not pull away, and Holland knew he didn’t get to choose when a kiss ended, and so it went on and on, the sounds of the fire snapping and popping and the feeling of Athos’s mouth, the taste of vodka and beer. Then Athos jumped and glared at Astrid. “Don’t kick me!”

“You stopped telling the story,” Astrid said flatly. “Give his mouth a rest for a bit, yeah? He'll be using it later."

Athos rolled his eyes. “Fine. Go on.”

The vodka warmed him all the way down, relaxed his shoulders, and he was more afraid of the darkness beyond the fire than he was of Athos Dane right now. After all, he’d been good for weeks. They were nice to him, these days, and it seemed easier to just let them be nice. To give them his skin and his fear and let them turn it into whatever they wanted.

_ Do whatever you want, because it can’t last forever. You’re going to fuck up one day. _

“The new young wife of Aleksander Larsson, who for the record goes unnamed and I have never liked that,” Astrid said, smashing a warm marshmallow between two Graham crackers with a chocolate bar, taking a delicate nibble off the end. 

“Not this again,” Athos interrupted.

“She should have a name!”

“Then give her one, it’s  _ your _ story!”

“She doesn’t have one in the original Mother told us, so she doesn’t have one now.” 

“ _ Now  _ who has stopped telling the story?”

She sighed and handed Holland the chocolate and Graham crackers, and he carefully made a s'more and handed it back to Athos, then started working on his own. 

“Fine, fine. The young wife of Aleksander Larsson was home alone, for her husband had gone a-hunting in the forest. Kitta came and said to the young wife, ‘Ah, your husband is so splendid, so handsome and kind.’ The young wife responded-” And here Astrid pitched her voice much higher, a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice that made Holland’s teeth itch. “‘What truth you speak! For my husband is so good he must grant my every wish before it is spoken. I am a lucky woman, to live such a blessed life.’”

She leaned over, touching the side of Holland's neck, let her fingertips move down to the collarbone piercing, trailing in circles around it. "Just like you," She murmured. “You’re so blessed.”

Holland swallowed against the instinctive disgust, tried to ignore the deeper, more frightening sense of reassurance ( _ if you feel that way you won’t hurt me _ ), and pulled his knees up to his chest just a little more tightly. He let the silver ball they’d put in his tongue click, just a little, against the back side of his teeth.

Astrid grinned, and the fire was in her eyes as she sat back up straight. “‘Take my word for it,’ said Kitta Grau, ‘no man is without his deceits. I will give you a challenge to your husband’s honor and the love he feels for you: there are two long hairs just under his chin. Should you take a razor and shave them while he sleeps, you would know he is without malice.’”

**S** he ate more of her s’more in silence for a minute, while Athos chewed behind him. There was a muffled sound from just beyond the line of the fire, high-pitched and pleading and not quite words and she glanced over her shoulder with narrowed eyes. Holland swallowed against a lump in his throat, the residual guilt. 

There was nothing he could do, he told himself. There was nothing he could do to help. They were three hours out from the nearest paved road, further than that from a town, and Holland couldn’t run very far any longer.

_ It’s just a body that doesn’t know it’s dead yet. It’s not a person. You are not responsible. That’s not a person. It’s just a body that doesn’t know it’s dead. _

_ Just a body. _

Astrid turned back. "Just leave her there. I want to tell my story. In any case, the young wife said, ‘If that will help, I will keep an eye open after dinner and attend to it, for he always takes a nap after our noon-day meal.’”

“Then,” Athos said, “Kitta Grau went into the forest and she found Aleksander Larsson, who was apparently very noisy if some random woman could track him through the woods.”

“Maybe she was a very good tracker,” Astrid said, one eyebrow raised, a challenge in her voice. Holland had the feeling that this was an argument they had had before.

"Or maybe he was a clumsy asshole who made a lot of noise."

"Mmmn. Men usually are.”

“Fuck you, Astrid, I once tracked a deer for  _ six hours  _ waiting for it to finally bleed out after a bad hit.”

“Ugh, not this again. Fine, okay, men are clumsy loud oafs -  _ present company excluded _ ."

"Thank you," Athos sniffed. "Except Holland's as loud as an elephant."

"Only because you bashed his knee in back in Florida," Astrid said, raising an eyebrow. "He was quiet before that."

"He made it almost a mile that time!"

"Well, I didn't say he didn't  _ deserve it. _ "

"Exactly. So let's finish the story."

Holland closed his eyes. Not only was he loud, he couldn't even run; he had a limp now he couldn't seem to shake and his left foot dragged if he tried to move too fast.

He was definitely _ never  _ letting them take him back to Florida. Not that he could stop them. Not that he could ever stop them.

"Kitta Grau hailed Aleksander Larsson and said, 'Hallo, Aleksander, I have been to see your new wife and she is  _ very _ good.'" Astrid winked at Holland, leaning over to push at his arm in a teasing way. Holland flickered a faint, nervous smile in her direction, without ever meeting her eyes. His knee hurt when it rained sometimes, too.

"'There is no one better,'" Athos replied, in a different voice than he had used for the Devil, leaning over to slide his arms around Holland from behind, kissing into the top of his hair, nuzzling against his ear, finally kissing down his neck. Holland only tilted his head to the side to make it easier for him. "'Kitta Grau,’” Athos murmured into his ear in his Aleksander Larsson voice, “‘go back to your scheming, for I know you love the Devil and I will not fall for your tricks again. I will not fall into your bed, for your bed is the Evil One’s bed, and he waits to take any man you bring there.'"

_ One day they’ll fuck up, leave too much evidence at the scene, or won't cuff me up before they go or they'll leave me alone too long. I’ll remember and I’ll ask for help. I won’t forget my real last name. I won’t forget who I was before they found me. _

Astrid's blue eyes stared right into the flames. "'It is true. I do love the Evil One and have taken him as my lover,' Kitta Grau said. 'He has shown me the deceit in the minds of men and women and I have a warning for you. Your wife has a plan to murder you. When you come home, you must beware, for she will cut your throat when you sleep. The Devil has shown me this.' Aleksander Larsson laughed at Kitta Grau and did walk away from her, but as he neared home, he began to doubt."

Athos began to let his hand slide slowly down Holland's back, fingertips trailing the knobs of his spine that stuck out through his skin, still kissing his neck. Holland clung to the disgust and loathing, but it had gone faint and faded with time, as though he'd simply worn it out. He was tired of being unhappy, and frightened. He felt himself relaxing into Athos's touch, into the story.  _ The brain will do anything, even let your body take over for a while to give you a break from horror. What matters is keeping your mind your own.  _ "Aleksander Larsson went home and ate his dinner with his wife smiling merrily. His doubts grew and grew, for Kitta Grau was a woman of uncommon persuasion."

Astrid handed Holland the cup to drink from again. He'd eaten two hot dogs and a s'more, was sitting in front of a crackling fire, the vodka working its warmth all through him, and Athos’s touch wasn’t entirely unwelcome right now, if only to keep him from thinking too much. He was almost sleepy, lulled by the sing-song way they spoke. He felt like a snake being hypnotized by a flute.

When they were nice like this, he thought it wasn't so bad. They needed someone to bounce off of, to keep alive. They only had each other, otherwise, but now they had him...

_ Fucking Stockholm Syndrome. Named it after some kind of bank robbery in Sweden, right? The hostages started to take the sides of the robbers. But they got better, once they were out, they got better… _

_ Didn’t they? _

"His wife," Astrid said, "seeing that he seemed deep asleep, took out his shaving razor, moved up to him with silent steps, and held his chin in her hand." Athos sat back, pulling on his shoulders. He leaned back against Athos, watching the far-away look on Astrid’s face, feeling the brush of Athos’s hands on his back, tilting his head back to kiss him again. “Listen to this part, you’ll like it,” Athos said, with a wicked smile.

_ Honestly, sometimes Athos is really funny.  _

“Aleksander flew up out of bed with an expression of  _ great shock and horror _ . ‘My wife, what perfidy is this?!’" Athos mimed his surprise, exaggerated huge wide eyes, and Holland caught himself smiling wide enough that his teeth showed, his head still tilted far back and resting in Athos’s lap. "'Do you intend to  _ murder me _ , as Kitta Grau did warn me?' And Aleksander Larsson, who feared for his life, killed his pretty new wife with the very shaving razor she had held out to him. Only then did Kitta Grau return to tell him about her wager with her lover, the Devil, and Aleksander Larsson burned the house down to hide what he had done, and took Kitta Grau on the very ground still warm from the fire, for the Evil One keeps his promises to Kitta Grau.

"The Devil reappeared and asked, 'Why, where is the house of the newlyweds and why is there so much smoke in the air? Kitta Grau, why is Aleksander Larsson as bare naked as the day he was born?' For the Devil can be stupid, too."

Holland laughed, a little helpless against the absurdity of the mental image, putting his hands up over his face. Athos gently took his wrists and forced them back down, watching him. The intensity in his face made the laughter die in Holland’s throat. 

_ He's  _ not _ funny. Stop it. Keep yourself together. _

Astrid smiled, all her sharp teeth on display. The thing in the grass rustled one more time and then was finally still. "'Aleksander has murdered his wife and the house is no more, my love. Aleksander is mine in body, yours now in spirit, and the house will never again know peace, for the house is no more. Is that not worth a pair of fine shoes?'"

Athos sat back, toying with a bit of the hair at the nape of Holland's neck. "The Devil feared Kitta Grau and loved her in equal measure. He gave her her fine shoes and more besides, and she kept Aleksander Larsson for her lover until she tired of him, and then gave him to the Evil One as a gift.”

“Kitta Grau serves the Devil to this day,” Astrid said with grave severity, “but there are those who say the Evil One serves _ her _ , first." With a sense of finality, she leaned over and splashed more vodka into the flames. “This is my story, and may the gods bless us for the telling.”

“Which one of us does the body, then?” Athos asked, his hands rubbing at Holland’s shoulders. “Which one goes first with Holland? Someone needs to stay out here by the fire to make sure everything burns correctly.”

Astrid grinned, a bright and shining expression with cold blue eyes to top it, and held up a fist. Holland watched with blank numbness as they played ‘rock, paper, scissors’ over who was going to take him into the tent to fuck him first.

It wasn’t the first time. Sometimes they flipped a coin. Once they had played fucking tic-tac-toe and it took three games for one of them to win.

Athos lost, and Astrid smirked, victorious. “I  _ always  _ know what you’re going to pick, Athos.”

“I _ let  _ you win this time.” 

“No, you just always pick scissors.”

“Scissors are sharp. I  _ like _ scissors.”

“Yeah, yeah. See, this is why I always end up getting the first turn. But you shouldn’t have to do it all yourself. I’ll help you with the body, then we’ll take turns afterward.” Astrid rose, and Holland stared at the way she stood, one hip out, and wondered that she could be so short and he was still so afraid of her. “Holland. Get in the tent.”

He nodded, scrambling to his feet, his left foot dragging just a little as he walked away from the thing in the grass.  _ Fucking Florida.  _ He unzipped the opening, listening to them behind him as they spoke in low voices, and as he settled into the bedding he could hear the grunts of effort as they picked the thing up. 

He didn’t try to help her, the girl with the run of bad luck, because he wasn’t sure how any longer. He was too afraid, because they knew, they knew  _ everything.  _ They knew every time he tried to signal someone or when he’d see an opening to just walk away, and they’d find him, drag him back, hurt something else, something new. 

There was always something else to hurt.

There was a noise, outside the tent, a muffled voice.

_ Oh god, she’s not dead yet. I don’t want to listen to her die.  _

He looked around inside the tent, desperately searching, knocking over the coffeepot he’d so carefully set in the corner. There was rustling and scraping from outside, Astrid and Athos arguing over who had fucked up, and beneath that the voice of the girl with the bad fucking luck to rear-end Athos at the supermarket.

_ I can’t listen to her die. _

He found what he was looking for and swallowed hard, breathing in shaky gasps, his heart pounding in his chest, hands shaking.

_ Please just die already. _

He was an accomplice, now, he was an accomplice turning his head the other way, but his brain would do anything to survive and he had to keep trying to hold himself together.

_ It is normal for the surviving victim, when held as a captive for a long time, to develop a sense of indifference or even hostility towards other victims, as a way of protecting themselves from developing an emotional connection or feeling guilt. _

He put the earbuds in for Astrid’s iPod, turned up her bizarre pop music as loud as it would go ( _ I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign _ ), and curled his knees up to his chest, arms around them, closing his eyes. He let the music blare, drowning out whatever came after the argument, drowning out the sound of the  _ thump _ and the fire.

He let the songs play, one after another, and settled in to wait for them to be done, for Astrid to come into the tent. He knew the routine.

_ First one and then the other, first one and then the other, first one and then the other, but sometimes both together, first one and the other and then and then and then _

He had to get away from them. It was always going to be just a matter of time before his bad fucking luck ran out. Where could he go? Athos and Astrid were all he had left. He couldn’t do anything on his own any longer. They'd know and they'd drag him back again. They’d made him helpless.

_ No, god damn it, you are not helpless. You are surviving, and one day there will be something after this. _

They would try to turn him into them, or into their pet, but he could resist. He could wait. He could bide his time, and remember that the brain will do anything to survive, but it was only a trick to keep himself alive, and sooner or later he would have his chance and take it.

Holland slowly opened his eyes, staring into the darkness, at the blurry flickering firelight he could see through the mesh of the tent. ( _ Why, bleeding is breathing,) s _ ang the voice of one of Astrid's awful pop singers through the earbuds. ( _ you're hiding underneath the smoke in the room, try, bleeding is believing, I saw you crawling on the floor)  _ and even the  _ music  _ wanted to make him lose his mind tonight.

No. It wasn't over. This wasn't it. He wasn't going to be a body. He wasn't going to give up. This wasn't it for him.

_ One day they’ll make a mistake, and there has to be enough of you left to run. _


	15. Red for Love (Prompt: First Time)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Drug withdrawal/discussion of drug use
> 
> This is another of the cyberpunk AU for prompt 14: First Time, featuring Luc and Rhy!

Luc's veins are burning for more.

Turns out two months is long enough to get addicted (hell, when he was a kid they were always saying  _ it only takes once, you’ll be addicted the first time _ , and he never believed them, but maybe they were right). His brain is on fire, he’s running at full tilt with no control. The connections he sees between all things are so bright they’re drowning out the rest of his visual input. 

Implants can’t keep up a speed like this for long. This is what it feels like when he has the adrenaline dump to keep him going just a little further, for a little longer, but he’s been like this for days and the fever keeps cycling and even his external wiring is too hot to touch.

The world is a knot of interwoven threads, all the local connections, and the undercurrent of the OSARON AI drifting in and out of it all, unable to control or to touch but waiting, always waiting, for the next person stupid enough to try and utilize a non-local network, the next idiot who thinks they can take it on and become  _ Antari _ -class, get burned alive inside like all the poor bastards trapped in the Black when it woke up the first time.

Like the burning in his veins, under his skin-

Luc groans and tries to move, but he’s misfiring and all he does is kick one leg. Withdrawal is fucking  _ bitch.  _

There is someone with him in the room, but maybe there isn’t, and he doesn’t know. All he knows is that his synthetic nerves are aching for more stimulation, for the drugs to come back, for what passed for Danelaw mercy.

He’s seeing things, hallucinating, firing synapses at random that send back delusions so real he can’t tell them apart any longer. The wires along his face are so hot they’re starting to singe his skin with the fever, and he speaks to people he knows aren’t here.

Sometimes it’s his mother, who he hasn’t thought of since she made a mistake and his father made her disappear, down into the labs for testing, and she never came back. Then his brother, the one who got him kicked out of the Red for seeing Rhy, defiling himself with a purity prince. Little sister, he can’t see her face, has he forgotten her face? No no no, her face is there, it’s somewhere in the jumble, the bits and pieces the Danes ran through and laughed over, their voices in his head were so  _ loud. _

For a while he’s talking to Stross, who is showing him a picture of one of the sacred martyrs and explaining it to him, only his voice is too low to understand. He calms, for a while, feels something cold in his blood, but it fades.

When it’s gone, he lights back up and there’s Athos or Astrid Dane (you can never tell which one of them is which, they’re so enhanced and changed and such identical white statutes of metal and fur and bone), and they tell him all the things they told him in that limo ride, all their hideous, terrible ideas for what they would do with all his organic and synthetic parts if he turned out to be useless, that his  _ best  _ case scenario would be a dealer at their casino and the worst case would be working the hotel rooms up above it, high as the skyscrapers the corporates live in, high as a kite, high on his back, high high high-

_ need the stims need to get high need to get high again _

Sometimes it’s Lila who speaks to him, wry and lovely Lila, his secret saint, only that might actually be real, he can’t tell, and all she ever does is put her cold metal hand on his head and tell him he has to wait it out to the bitter end.

Once it was KL, who didn’t come to gloat but just to check on him and that didn’t seem right. KL hated him, always had. He’d been too close to Rhy when KL had express programming to keep everyone away. But no, KL is busy with something, something with Holland-

_ something something something what is even real is this even happening? _

_ drugs drugs are real get it back in my brain _

Was he even rescued? Was it all just a fever-dream? Is Holland still sitting next to that hospital bed, still as death, waiting for Luc to give up?

_ give me some goddamn stims I’ll do whatever you want please _

Thank the fucked up gods Astrid hadn’t hooked him up with remote shit like she did Holland. You could go through withdrawal and survive it for the kind they put in through your port, the kind he’d been fed by the needle in his arm and the wires that made up what used to be Holland’s left hand, but you couldn’t come back from the remote stims. Holland was fucked, thanks to those, he was a puppet with a brainl

He didn’t even know if you _ could _ remove those, only the chop shops and cyborgs would know about that. That was the kind of tech even pirates didn’t touch with a thirty-foot pole, the kind of tech only the Danes would traffic in.

Luc is still more human than computer, and that made him the odd man out when he was with KL and Lila, assuming he actually  _ was  _ with them and this wasn’t just withdrawal visions. When they are both in the room he sees OSARON winding around them, waiting, waiting, waiting. 

Maybe he  _ was _ still in that hospital bed, maybe he’d never left, maybe Astrid wanted him strung out and helpless and hopeless even after she'd scraped all the information she could use, even after he'd already given up everything. String him out and get him real desperate and see what he’d agree to do for more.

Joke’s on her; Luc’d been living in the Sea for four years. He didn’t exactly have a lot of pride to stand on. He has even less now.

_ i don't care who she attacks next just give me something to get high on _

Oh he wanted the stims back so badly, stims or downers, he didn’t care, just something to make him calm  _ down,  _ to cool the way his facial wiring was nearly red from heat and he was going to scar like the thousand or so people who'd survived what OSARON did to the Black.

_ lila has scars _

_ holland come back _

_ lila won’t tell you where she got her implants done _

_ i’ll do whatever they want _

_ lila won’t tell you anything _

_ i don’t care what it is I can’t live like this any longer _

_ where did lila get her antari enhancements _

_ please don’t make me live like this _

How much of your brain was even left if they kept taking things out? Astrid had let him pass out halfway through the installation process for his own new neurals, had they taken anything out of him, then?

_ they’ve left me alone to shake  _

_ give me some stims please  _

_ i’ll give you anything at all whatever you want  _

_ please just give me some stims _

He’s not sure what happened, where he is, how he got here. He’d passed out when they took the needle out of his arm, and he didn’t know after that point what was real and what wasn’t. It was all bundle of sensation running along synthetic nerve endings that joined with the living ones.

The stims. He needs the fucking stims back.

Just needs one more hit. One more would calm the fire down, that’s it, and then he could wean himself off… just one more.

“Just one,” He breathes, not even aware he’d spoken out loud. “Please, I can’t-”

“Ssshhhhh, lay still,” Comes a whisper,  _ the  _ whisper, the voice he has been waiting to hear again for four years, and Luc begins, finally, to cry.

This isn’t real. It’s just a fever dream, like before. But Rhy’s voice hadn’t sounded so damn  _ real  _ before. The Danes are so fucking cruel, to let him dream about him again. To let him hear that voice knowing it’s just to make him beg for it to stop.

"Don't do this to me, you fucking monster." His voice is a whimper. He's begging, shamelessly, he can't stop. "I can't, please don't give me Rhy and take him away again, I can't, I can't, please,  _ please _ -"

"It's me, Luc. I'm here."

"Please don't, I'll give you whatever you want, please…"

_ I don’t want you to make me see him again, I can’t do this, just give me the stims, please don’t make me see him again it hurts too much _

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, Luc, I’m here.” The wet cloth against his burning forehead again, and he can feel sparking inside his mind. He’s running so hot, all the bits Astrid forced into him are going too fast for him to keep up. His hands are twitching, he can feel his synthetic heart stutter-skipping with missed signals and the backup heart racing to fill in the pauses. His foot keeps trying to press on the accelerator in a vehicle he’s not in. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”

Cool fingers against his face, fingers that are only skin and bone and blood. Alarms start to drop, the facial connections finally cooling, leaving an ache. His purity prince. His unenhanced love. The only person he’s ever met who lives anywhere but the Gray who isn’t hooked up to wires and implants. The most important person, the only person in the world that matters.

_ He’s not here, it’s just a trick, it’s the Danes, they still have you and this is all a trick. They’re just trying to fuck you up. _

“They succeeded. Rhy-” His voice chokes, and he tries to roll onto his side, tears running down his face over the silvered wires like scars, sobbing hoarsely, helplessly. "Rhy, all I dream about is you, please don't take him away again, Astrid, I'll do it, whatever it is, just please…" He's clutching at the cool hands, which grip onto his tightly, curving around the wires that rest just under his skin. The signals are calming, like they always do with Rhy.

There’s a wave of dizziness, he’s knocked apart by nausea, but it passes. He’s nearly sightless against the constant flashing alarms from the neurals begging for attention. He wants more drugs. He wants them so badly.

“Luc,” Rhy says softly, and puts one of those cool hands against his face, and holds his hand with the other, and Luc sobs in broken relief and horror and love.

_ Please let this be real. _

“Rhy,” He says, and he wants to say  _ I love you  _ but what comes out instead is “I need some uppers-”

“No, Luc. You’ve been on too many. My brother ran a diagnostic and you haven’t been sober in sixty-three days - your readout was all uppers and downers, nonstop, 24 hours a day. You were never  _ not _ high, do you understand?"

"What?"

"The readouts said Astrid's been pumping you full of every addictive thing the Danelaw Group produces - Kell doesn’t even know what half of them  _ are,  _ let alone what they can do to your internals. They were using you for  _ product testing. _ Holland was recording your biological responses and sending them to Danelaw."

"They… they were t-testing shit on me?" His veins itched. He couldn’t peel his skin back to scratch deep enough. "They were testing shit on me and we don't even know  _ what?" _

That would make it harder to get more, and he  _ needed _ a little more, and only the Danes could give it to him… maybe if he asked-

"You've already been given some stuff for recovery but you can't have any more yet. Lila can’t watch you right now, so they’ve asked me to sit with you for a while, okay?”

“W-why can’t L-l-l… Lila?” His mouth isn’t working, the neurals are misfiring a little, and he just wants to hold Rhy and be high forever. 

“She and Kell are working on Holland. Once you’re steady, they want you to help, too, Kell thinks you might be able to work with some of the wiring better than they can, since your hands are still human.” Rhy’s always been like that - even after they changed KL’s legal designation, even after they made him change his name to the naming conventions for robots, Rhy still pronounces it ‘kell’, like they’re still kids, like KL is still human.

“Wh-what are they doing to him-”

“If you think you were fucked up by the Danelaw, you should see what  _ his  _ brain looks like,” Rhy says, and there is a hint of wry humor in his voice, and Luc wishes he could see past the flashing lights, past all his blaring alarms inside his mind. “Kell has this idiotic idea that he can save him, dig all of Astrid’s little surprises out.” Rhy snorted, and it was his Rhy, all right, that was something even Astrid Dane could not fake in a hallucination. “He’s always been an idiot about the Danelaw cyborg.”

"Where are we? I can't see…"

"We're in a safehouse, with the purity priests." Rhy pauses. "Holland told us you gave up my code at the end, so we're laying low."

"I'm so sorry." Luc whispers.

"It's okay. I don't blame you. Kell's been running the scans on everyone, so he saw what Holland did to you. Holland told us a lot all on his own once we got the choker out of his vocals. I'll be fine, Kell can keep me safe. He's got an in with the High Priest. But we’re going to be here until you and Holland can leave on your own two feet."

He is shaking, and he doesn’t know when the shaking started, he’s shaking and he’s so cold but there is so much sweat on him, a cold sweat that freezes him further. “Rhy, please,  _ please,  _ just one more time, one more hit-”

“No,” Rhy says softly, lovingly, and leans over. Their foreheads touch and some of Luc’s shaking calms. The alarms soften and a few go silent. When Rhy kisses him, just the barest fleeting touch of cool lips, Luc’s neurals go briefly silent.

This is Rhy Maresh’s secret; he’s not unenhanced because he  _ wants _ to be. It's not some rich-kid corporate affectation, a trend he’s picked up.

Rhy is locked up in the tallest of the Maresh Corp towers and never allowed to leave without an entire cavalcade of bodyguards and KL by his side, and there’s a very good reason.

It’s the reason Astrid and Athos Dane want to take him and put him on a stim leash that’s theirs and theirs alone: 

Rhy is a walking shut-down code.

He’s unenhanced because whenever he is near the network connections, they go silent. Implants don't work in him. Even OSARON can’t touch him, can’t even see that he exists. The only things he  _ doesn't _ take out are the synthetic organs and old fashioned stims, the kind you inject directly with needles ( _ the kind the Danelaw put in my arm) _ , only because they don't require network connections. When Rhy gets angry, or scared, it gets worse and worse and worse.

If the Danes fed him scare-stims through a needle he could shut down a whole fucking building. If they fed him pain he could remove the network from a city block. If they fed him pleasure, he could walk right into the Black and plug the control chip for the Danes into OSARON himself.

He was abducted once, and being too close to a terrified Rhy had put KL (who was still Kell then, still human-classified) into such an uncontrolled frenzy once his OSARON connection was gone that all that was left was thirteen corpses and a lot of blood clogging up Kell’s system that didn’t belong to him. It’d taken the surgeons in the Maresh chop shop three weeks to replace all the damaged systems.

Rhy Maresh is a secret weapon, a weapon the Danelaw is dying to get their claws on, and Luc loves him for every other reason but that.

He quiets the blister of voices in Luc’s head, settles the rampant visuals, and for a moment even the cravings are a little calmer. The feeling of cool water washes down his spine as his internal cooling system reboots and kicks back on for the first time since he drank Astrid Dane's drugged champagne.

The fever damps down immediately as his veins flood with it. 

All he sees is the bit of red behind closed eyes.

“Rhy-”

“Open your eyes and look at me, Luc.”

It’s been almost four years. Luc looks up, his eyes still blurry and hot with tears. 

It’s the first time he’s seen Rhy since they kicked him out of the Red, since they sent him packing beaten half to death and with a third of his neurals yanked out against his will for being "proprietary". It’s the first time they’ve touched each other. It’s the first time he’s seen those beautiful dark eyes, the curly black hair a little longer than it used to be, his brown skin completely devoid of wiring, his face a little narrower than it used to be, maybe, a little older, but still so handsome.

“I missed you,” Rhy says, and his voice is quiet and warm. Luc grabs onto his hands, a liferaft in an ocean of need. A neural implant flashes red before it drops out, too, and he smiles. 

Red for Rhy.

Red for love.

"I love you so much," Luc finally says, and Rhy hugs him, and it doesn't matter where he is, he's home.


	16. The Give Between Your Teeth (Prompt: Soulmates)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know that there are any specific trigger warnings on this one, but it IS Astrid Dane, so... be warned.
> 
> This could be considered pre-canon, it's kind of a prologue to my longer fic Endurance. Just Astrid ruminating on the truths of life while eating cherries in creepy ways.

“Athos believes in soulmates,” Astrid said, picking up a cherry she’d pitted, lifting it to her mouth, looking at the smear of red like blood it’d left on her pure white plate. She smiled, picked up another, and began to take the pit from that one, too. 

The fruit gave invitingly beneath her fingers, the skin splitting easily, the softer parts within yielding up the little stone. She let it clatter onto the plate next to the other, set the cherry down, and moved to pick the next one up from the bowl. Twist the stem off, split the skin, dig the center out, let the red drip on the plate.

“I don’t, but of course I have one already, don’t I?”

She kept her fingers busy while she spoke, and while the red puddle grew and grew on her plate, not a single drop fell onto her pure white shirt and pants. She smeared a little cherry juice across her lips, laughing to herself at the idea of this strange lip rouge.

“Think of the word, darling. Just _ think. _Soulmate. Mate of your soul. The other half of you, right? That’s what it means.”

Twist, split, dig, _ clink. _

The pile of pitted cherries was beginning to grow, and her fingers were stained a deep, dark red. She dug another one out of the bowl her little servant girl had brought her, the one with wide dark eyes in her small pale face, the one who knew better than to speak a word to her queen. Athos’s bruised-up servant boy, the one who’d refused to kneel in the street, stood off to the side. He was waiting for orders, dear heart, and his mark was bleeding again. 

Holland stood against the back wall, as usual, his arms crossed in front of himself, staring at her guest with an unreadable intensity. She never knew what went on in his mind, her beautiful damned _ Antari. _He’d long since learned to hide his thoughts from her everywhere but Athos’s torture chamber.

No, Holland was nothing but blank space, dressed in black. She kept him here to make him watch, knowing she could force him to fight Kell at any time, or pour the powder in the wine, or do any depraved degrading thing she wished.

All she wanted tonight, though, was someone to witness her enjoying herself.

“Boy,” She said without turning her head. “Bring our guest another drink.”

She listened to the youth's bare feet pad away, stepping over the bones set into the floor. Her fingers stayed hard at work at the cherries. She held one out to her guest, waited a moment, then laughed. “Fair enough, they’re not to everyone’s taste, of course. But Holland brought these to us from another world, so I feel it’s only fair to enjoy them to the fullest.”

She licked cherry juice off her finger, and watched the cold sweat break out on her guest’s face. 

“Calm yourself, Kell, we’re only having a conversation. You’re looking lovely tonight, all dressed like rabble off the streets. Did you have plans for tonight, after you brought the missive from your king and queen?”

Kell swallowed, hard, and she saw that his eyes had dropped to her hands, red to the second knuckle, the puddle of juice on the plate. He was drunk, of course, because he had always been a young man who could never say _ no _. 

So much trouble one can get themselves into when they fear being rude.

“No, I… yes.” 

The danger you put yourself in when you struggle to lie under pressure.

“Where will you go, then? Tell me.”

“M-my brother wants to roam,” Kell stammered, and his eyes didn’t rise back to hers. He never took his gaze off her fingers. She let them splay just a little bit, letting him know she saw. He flushed red, and she smiled. When she smiled, her teeth were stained as red as her tongue and her lips and her fingers.

He was from another world, but he was still a man, after all. Men were so easy to read.

“Will you give the prince my greetings, flower boy?”

He nodded, but she didn’t really believe him. Kell kept secrets. He smuggled things, and thought no one noticed, but Holland did - and what Holland knew, Astrid knew. 

It didn’t matter. Here he was, tied to his chair not by ropes or chains but by simple drunkenness and politeness and fear, and Astrid loved nothing so much as she loved the scent of fear.

Fear, desire, and cherries in a pile on her plate.

“In any case, what was I talking about? Ah, yes, soulmates. The definition of a soulmate is someone you are meant to stand beside, the person who complements and completes you most in the world. We live in worlds that demand the meaning of that word be romantic, but of course, why should it be?”

Twist, split, dig, _ clink. _

“I already have my soulmate, of course. He was born three minutes after I was. We complete each other, and I cannot live without him. So if you consider it from that angle, it makes sense that my soulmate is my brother, doesn’t it?”

Kell nodded again. When she paused, her fingernail dug hard into the red flesh of the cherry, he said quickly, “Yes, it does, it m-make sense.” His Maktahn was so halting when he was worried. She smiled, aware that the cherry juice across her lips was less like lipstick and more like drying blood. 

“Glad to see you agree.” The boy returned with the glass of wine in one hand, setting it before him carefully, then stepping back to wait at her elbow. She turned to look at him, licking the residual juice off her lips. “Boy. You’re dismissed.”

“Your Majesty…?” He looked from her to the man who sat across from her at the table, and while Athos was more fond of the boy than she, Astrid still took joy from the mix of fear and rage in his face, the lies he never learned to tell.

Holland was an empty statue these days, not even a rattle of bone. He was carefully numb, did as he was told, and suffered for Athos without complaint.

But Astrid had never wanted her men numb, or frightened into submission. She did not drink defiance the way her brother did. 

“I said dismissed. Kell will be heading home soon, and we have no further need of you.”

Astrid waited patiently for the sound of his footsteps to fade, and the grand white room grew silent but for the sound of Kell’s slightly ragged breathing and Astrid pitting the final cherry.

Twist, split, dig, _ clink. _

“Athos is my soulmate, of course, because he is the mate of my soul, my other half, the sweetest boy in the world. Who is _ your _soulmate? Is it your brother, too, Kell?”

“I don’t think so,” Kell said, and his words were a little slurred. He never could turn down a drink, the poor boy. The poor dear. The poor darling. Astrid bit half of a cherry and smiled. She could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. "I would think mine would be…" He trailed off and blushed - ah, redheads blushed so _ easily. _

“Would you like to stay the night, Kell?” She asked, pitching her voice slightly lower. "With me?"

_ One day, flower boy, you’ll kneel and kiss my feet. _

“What?” His answer was hardly even a whisper, but the look of horror on his face was just so much _ fun. _

Astrid ate the other half of the cherry, picked the next one up, rolled it back and forth between thumb and forefinger. “I’m only joking, of course. But haven't you thought about it?"

"N-no," He stammered, and he was too drunk and his face too red to lie well. Astrid knew she was frightening to many men, but she also knew that fear and desire live on two sides of a blade, so close from each other that their edges kiss.

She knew that men have dreams, of course, and she knew from the look on Kell’s face that she had been in his before. She smiled. "Why not spend the night in a palace, with a queen? Do you _ truly _ intend to go back already drunk and _ then _follow your brother to some filthy commoner’s tavern, find some wench?”

“I’ll be fine,” Kell replied with careful firmness, taking a drink from the new glass. "I don't do anything more than make sure Rhy is safe."

"So _ he _ is the one finding wenches. Or… I apologize, what is your word for a male wench?"

Kell's eyes narrowed. "We don't have one. What my brother does is well within the bounds of acceptable behavior in polite society in Arnes." How his voice changed when the prince was a topic of conversation. 

“Here, they are not so understanding, princeling. Here, what your brother seeks out with men would be looked at askance. Ah, but they have learned from Athos, my people, that a king must be allowed his… indulgences.”

“I’m sure they have.” Kell licked his lips nervously, and she watched him, thinking, her smile still playing across her lips.

“When your brother is king, will he care about his lineage? His legacy? Or will he care only about his own pleasure, like Athos does?”

“That is none of your business.” With Kell, it was always the same buttons to press. Unable to raise a word in his own defense, but always ready to fight for his brother. 

_ One thing we have in common: I ensure my brother gets what he wants, too. _

He pushed his chair back to stand, unsteadily, the scrape of the legs on the floor deafeningly loud in the silence. She watched him wince, and smiled at him as he bowed to her.

“I should go,” He said, his tongue thick with wine, stumbling through the words. "I think it would be best."

“Finish your wine first,” She said softly. “The boy took the trouble to bring it, after all.”

"Does he have a name?" Kell asked tightly.

"Who?" She knew very well who he meant, but tilted her head and put on her most innocently puzzled expression regardless.

"Your… your servant. Does he have a name?"

Astrid chuckled. "His name doesn't matter."

_ One day, you’ll kneel for Athos’s lash. One day you'll stretch on his rack. One day you'll bleed on his floor, and oh, how he will smile as he drinks your blood, my beautiful boy, my twin. _

_ Your future king. _

_ On that day, your name won't matter, either. We will cut it out of you until you answer only to the name we give you. _

Kell gulped the rest of the wine down, bowed to her again, lower this time. She watched him, smiling still, popping another cherry into her mouth. She waved at him with fingers stained the dark, luscious red of cherries, and watched his eyes focus on them, held there by a fascination that he no doubt is too afraid to name, before he took a step back.

“Come back in three days, and I will have the answer for your monarchs then,” She said gently. Athos was her soulmate in every way - they loved and believed all the same things. They wanted all the same things. They had the same goals.

He looked up at Holland, and Astrid narrowed her eyes, just a little, at the expression there. He always looked at her Holland that way - a little hungry, a little lost, as though he was waiting for the other man to hold out a hand, an olive branch. A word of kindness or affection.

Holland stared at him with blank hostility and stood unmoving until Kell finally left. Astrid watched him hurry out in something that wasn’t quite a run. 

Astrid began to laugh to herself, low and throaty, eating the cherries one by one by one by one.

Line up the players in the game, she thought to herself, then stab them all right through the throat.

She looked at the small pile of cherry stones at the side of her plate, and the larger pile of uneaten fruit on the other. Castoffs, collateral damage, and the juice and fruit all she truly wanted.

"Which do you think he will be?" She asked, sitting back in her chair, holding up a cherry in one stained hand. 

"Majesty?" Holland did not move, only raised one eyebrow in a perfect arch.

"Is Kell Maresh the soft flesh of the fruit in our mouths, you and I, or the hard stone I toss aside?"

There was the briefest of pauses. "I don't know."

"Which would you like him to be?"

Holland said nothing, and Astrid smiled to herself. 

"Come here, Holland. My goblet is empty." He came to her, knife already out, and she held her cup up against his wrist.

"I think I want him to be the fruit," She said, softly, popping one up into his mouth as he bled. He took it from her fingers without resistance. "I think I want him to be devoured, eaten alive, wrecked and left broken. I want his blood in my mouth. What do you think?"

Holland did not look at her. "Whatever you wish, my lady," He said evenly. "Whatever you wish him to be."

"Hm." Astrid looked back towards the door where he had gone. "What do _ you _wish? Would you devour him, Holland? Would you feel flesh tear between your teeth? Would you leave him wrecked and ruined?"

Holland met her eyes, briefly. "I want him to regret the way he looks past me," He said, with real honesty. Astrid blinked, surprised. “I want,” Holland continued, with the barest edge in his voice, “to make him regret every time he’s looked the other way. I want him to understand what it feels like to watch someone else get to leave, while he must stay here and be broken.”

Astrid swallowed against an unfamiliar emotion - it was not desire, not exactly. Nothing so base as lust. Instead, it was the need to actually _ know _ Holland, see inside his mind and understand the complicated river of his thoughts. Astrid had never felt much interest in _ knowing _anything about people except for how to use them.

She had never wanted to _ understand _Holland Vosijk before.

"Holland… if I brought you Kell Maresh, tied up with a pretty bow, what would you do with him?"

Holland looked away, jaw tightening, as he bled into her goblet, and her laugh bounced off the walls like off-key silver bells. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.” She waited, for a moment, tapping her fingertips on the goblet, then lifting the blood to her mouth to drink in his magic, feeling her veins soften and blacken with it, just a little more each day. “Answer in honesty, Holland Vosijk, I command you by the mark on your chest. If I brought you Kell Maresh, what would you _ do? _”

He lifted his eyes back up to hers, the faded, mossy green smoldering, the black a featureless void, as always. The tightness at the corner of his mouth was the only thing that gave away that the answer came from him unwilling. “I think… I would hurt him the way I have been hurt. I would like to drag someone down as low as I have gone.”

She smiled, just a little. "You may go. I have some thinking to do."

Holland left, but not before she got to enjoy the look of supreme self-loathing on his usually expressionless face. 

Astrid sat alone in her throne room. She bit down on a cherry and felt its soft, sweet flesh give between her teeth, the spit of red juice, like blood from a wound. 

_ Holland, my darling, infamous Holland, pretty hurting Holland… I think I’ll give you a present. _


	17. Nervousness (Prompt: Accidental Baby Acquisition)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: implied/reference sexual assault/rape, but that's about it
> 
> Set in the same setting as the Dark Alternate Universe Prompt, so go read that if you haven't or this chapter won't make much sense. Credit to pinkcupboardwitch and muffinworry for a few of the lines here and for talking me through this idea and taking it from "Eh, maybe" to "I HAVE TO WRITE THIS RIGHT NOW" because they enable me

The queen of the Arnesian empire was nervous.

Astrid Dane was not accustomed to the sensation. She had never been a nervy child, one to jump at shadows or be frightened of what might be under the bed; she and her brother had always been a self-contained unit. When one of them faltered in confidence, the other was there to make up the lack.

When Athos had been scared of the dark, Astrid had lit things on fire to light his way. When she had worried about under the bed, Athos had sprinkled powder from a death’s head mushroom to poison whatever might be lingering there. When an older boy had pushed Athos down and made him cry, Astrid had forced him into a well at knifepoint and listened to him scream for an hour, smiling and smiling, before she ran for help.

Athos was not here, though, and she was worried. This was not something her brother could help her with. This conversation she would have to have alone. If she were frank with herself, she was even more worried about the conversation she would have to have with _ him. _

Astrid sat, worrying at her long nails, picking at them, her hair a thick, loose white-blonde curtain that hung, shining, down to her lower back. She wore only a blue silk dressing gown, tied at the waist, a sky blue that matched her eyes, perhaps just a tad warmer. The black veins were a little faded, and she looked at the back of her hands, white eyebrows furrowing a little. 

Definitely faded. But then, it had been more than two weeks since she’d had a drop of blood to drink.

Astrid, who had wielded a sword against the captain of Maxim Maresh’s personal guard while her brother took on the king himself, and who had done so without fear and with the screaming war cry of her people on her tongue, bit her lower lip and worried about what she would say when Lila got here.

From the day she had given Lila the privateer’s ship (the privateer being the ringleader of one of the riots, he’d been sent straight into prison. She hadn’t known then what he had been and still was to her husband), she had told Lila to keep to one single rule. She may sail the  _ Night Spire  _ and its only slightly press-ganged crew as far and wide as she wished, within reason, but she must return… and must wait to be greeted by the queen before she stepped foot back on Arnesian soil. 

Sometimes it was after only two weeks, sometimes a month, sometimes three - but every time, the queen ensured Lila Bard and her crew were not allowed to disembark until Astrid Dane was there to see her.

Except today.

Today, there were guards to greet Delilah Bard instead, a half-dozen of the Queen’s Own, mostly mindless but for their captain, a young priest-to-be Astrid had liked the look of. He hadn’t wanted to be a guard, but that didn’t particularly matter. The mindless ones didn’t really need a captain, anyway. He was mostly there for aesthetics.

It was a queen’s prerogative to keep someone around she just liked to look at, after all.

The queen sat on the soft, comfortable chaise lounge she’d moved out of her husband’s room when she took the crown, brought with her into the enormous king and queen’s shared chambers after their… untimely deaths. One of her first mercies, to her husband; she had moved out all of his parents’ furniture and replaced it with his own or with new. She did not force him to sleep in his dead parents’ bed.

He had chosen to obey, after all, and of his own free will, to save his people. 

Astrid Dane could be merciful. Her brother did not know the word, but Astrid… Astrid could see when you wielded mercy instead of a knife, and cut just as deep.

She sat, and drummed her fingernails on the side table until the click nearly drove her mad, and waited.

Eventually, one of the guards told her Lila had made it to the front gates and the castle grounds, and she forced herself to relax. The headache pounded at her temples, but Astrid had long been master of herself, and she did not allow the headache to bother her.

Or the other things. She pressed a hand against the flat of her stomach, swallowing hard.

When Lila arrived it was without escort or fanfare, flinging the doors open so loudly they crashed into the wall, her true and false eyes wide with concern. “Astrid! Are you ill? They told me to come right here-”

Astrid held up one hand, palm out, and Lila’s voice cut-off mid-sentence. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Astrid asked, her voice lilting and heavily accented, and pointed to the ground. “Greet your queen, first.”

“You are well?” Lila asked, a further question in her voice, underneath her actual words.

“I am well enough. Now…” Astrid put her jeweled hand out. “Do as you are told, Delilah.”

A half-smile stretched across Lila’s face and she dropped to one knee and took Astrid’s hand in both of hers, pressing her forehead briefly to it, the Maktahn symbol of respect for authority. 

Obedience was not required of Delilah Bard, but it was occasionally requested. And for every time Lila knelt to her, she knew Astrid would kneel as well.

Her beautiful  _ Antari  _ girl, a walking weapon, a woman so covered in knives it was a miracle she did not rattle. Astrid loved her so fiercely. 

Lila pressed her lips to the back of Astrid’s hand, as was proper in Arnes, then she turned her hand over and kissed the inside of her palm, to her wrist, trailing lips up her arm until she had risen and moved to Astrid entirely, sliding a knee on either side of her, settling atop her legs, pressing their mouths together. For a moment all was silence, the warmth of tongues, the way her Lila-pirate smelled always on her return of wind and salt and sea. Then Astrid slid her fingers around behind Lila’s head to grab her hair and yanked her head back, exposing her neck. “I could slice you open and bleed you dry,” Astrid murmured, grazing across the front of her throat with her teeth. “Drink up all that magic blood and roll around in what’s left of you.”

“But then who would cut you up the way you like?” Lila laughed, a deep, throaty sound. “I missed you, Astrid.”

“It’s been three  _ months,” _ Astrid said, biting gently at an earlobe. “I counted the days.” She let go of Lila’s hair and slid her arms around her waist. “You were gone too long, Delilah.”

“I wanted to see something new, so I went.” No apologies from Lila Bard, who did not apologize, who did not regret, who came and went and served her queen. Lila’s arms, wrapped in the black leather she wore when she was home, went around her neck. They stayed like that, in comfortable silence, and Astrid breathed in Lila’s salt-sea smell.

“Holland will want to see you,” Astrid said into the side of Lila’s neck. “You know how he worries when you’re away.”

Holland had brought them the young thief, scrawny and all elbows and knees, dressed in men’s clothes from her world and spitting fire and ambition. By the time they had made their move on Arnes - by the time Lila knew how to befriend Kell and then turn on him without getting attached - Holland had given something of himself away that Astrid had never noticed before; he  _ cared _ .

“He can wait,” Lila snorted. “He knows I can take care of myself.” She hesitated, and something in her face softened. That was the trick to Delilah Bard, too - she was sharper and harder than Holland could ever hope to be, but Lila cared, too. “How  _ is _ he, anyway? Is he well?” Lila’s fingers trailed over her shoulder, down the sides of her arms, and Astrid shivered a little.

“Mmmmn, Holland is fine. He has been spending more time here with Kell. Or I suppose I should say he spends more time here beating Kell into the ground in the training ring.”

“Ooooh, I’m sorry to miss _ that _ .”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think Holland… well.” Astrid’s smile was dreamy and pleased. "I do know better.”

It was making Kell a stronger magician, day by day, and that might be a problem in the future to be dealt with. But now was not the time - and the rune they’d carved into his cheek would keep him under her thumb, regardless of his power.

“Good,” Lila grinned at her, all sharp teeth and malevolence and spiky short dark hair, and Astrid had never seen anything so beautiful as her thin lips and wide eyes. “Your hair hangs loose. I’ve never seen you without your hair done this late in the day.  _ Are  _ you ill?”

“Not exactly.” Astrid hesitated. “Sit on the chaise with me.”

“I  _ am _ on the chaise with you. Just not  _ on  _ it.” 

“Lila…”   


“Ugh, fine.” Lila moved to sit next to her, and Astrid wasn’t even sure where to begin. She was a woman of supreme self-possession and had always been that way. She and Athos had always known they were special, destined for greatness, and had spent their adolescence and early adulthood murdering everyone around them who looked askance at them to prove it. She had never once stumbled. 

Every step had been carefully planned, sometimes a decade in advance, to get her to where she stood today. She and Athos had trained to fight, and to kill, and to conquer. They had not led much of an army into Makt but had taken it nonetheless, and had captured the strongest magician in the world in the process. They had tortured him to such brokenness that he had brought them another  _ Antari  _ willingly just in the hopes that it might take their gaze off of him.

Her plans had always worked. She had grown into a frightening warrior, a woman whose lovers could not live long without her, first queen of a dying kingdom and now queen of a living empire and sister of the king of a world that had woken up. She had taken the crown prince and killed his parents, made him a king and then her husband, had turned the  _ Antari  _ into her personal obedient servants. She had even found love as cruel and ambitious and conniving as she was.

Astrid had fulfilled all of her own wildest dreams, and it had all gone according to plan.

But this…  _ this  _ was not a part of her plan.

“Lila,” Astrid said, and her voice shook. 

“Astrid?” Lila’s eyes were wide again. “What’s wrong?”

“I have missed my cycle twice.”

There was silence, in the cavernous bedroom, while she and Lila only stared at one another. “What does that mean?” Lila asked in a whisper, but her face paled in a way that told Astrid the knowledge - the  _ understanding _ \- was sinking in.

“You  _ what? _ ” Her husband’s voice asked.

Astrid jumped with surprise, turning to look at Rhy, who was sitting at a table several feet away staring at her with an expression of shock almost comically identical to Lila’s. 

“I forgot you were here,” Astrid said blankly.

“What  is  _he_ doing here?” Lila demanded, shooting a glare in his direction.

“These  _ are  _ his rooms,” Astrid said, a little gently. “You might have noticed he sleeps in our bed.” 

“I’ve noticed he sleeps  _ with  _ us,” Lila said, shooting a teasing smile at Rhy, who ignored her entirely.

Astrid sighed and turned to Rhy, and in the exact same hard angry tone Lila had just used, she snapped, “What  _ are _ you doing here? Were you  _ listening? _ ”

“No.” Rhy’s voice, even now, had a hint of wry humor. “I try to never, ever listen to the two of you. Astrid, please… say what you said before again.” He pushed himself to his feet, moving towards her. His hands were shaking, Astrid noted, in the part of her that remained always detached and analytical. Shaking hands, wide dark eyes, the look of slightly numb surprise. 

Is this what all men looked like, when they learned?

“You don’t give her  _ orders, _ ” Lila hissed. “She’ll tell you what she wants, and if she wants you to leave and not hear it at all-”   


"Lila, that isn’t necessary, you should show more respect to your king,” Astrid chided softly, and watched her _Antari _go quiet. Only for her, she thought. Only for her did Lila do as she was told, soothe her sharp tongue, and there was no mark on her to force obedience like the others. Lila was different. Lila was special, like she and Athos were special.

Astrid was so in love with her.

“I said that I am with child.”

“You…” Rhy’s voice trailed into nothing before more than the first word was out. Her husband, such a  _ good _ king, so willing to throw himself on the sacrificial altar to save the lives of his people.

He had chosen obedience to save them, and had held himself still and turned his face of his own free will for Athos’s knife and ink. They hadn’t even tied him down for it. He’d only gripped the edges of the table they’d laid him on, one side of his face pressed into the wood, and waited with his eyes shut for them to finish. Had prayed to himself, those strange prayers Arnesians gave to no gods at all.

Had said, when they asked him if he wanted to give his people a final message while still free, that he had no final  _ anything _ for them because he would still be their king, and they would be safe, and that was all Rhy Maresh cared about.

That was the first time Astrid had thought him striking.

They’d made Kell watch - he was already marked by then. By the gods, what a wonderful  _ day  _ that had been. Rhy had looked a ruin of blood by the end, Kell had wept in his helplessness, and they both had been so beautiful.

Now, he looked as though he had taken a blow. His face went ashen under his dark skin only to flush red afterward. “You are with child?”

His voice shook. Arnes had really had something special in him, Astrid thought. If only he had not been so weak as to lose, he might have been a king of historic power, magic or no. Her husband, who had been taken as a spoil of war, really, a way to show this arrogant world that they could not stand against her, even their  _ king  _ would kneel… sometimes he impressed her.

“Yes, husband.”

He crossed the room in a few strides and she looked up at him, in the loose unbuttoned shirt and pants he wore, and thought,  _ I could have done worse for someone to play the father. He really does have a magnificent body. I really did miss my Lila so much while she was gone, and when you have a man like that sleeping in your bed and you are his queen... _

Rhy dropped to his knees before her, reached out and took her hands in his, and Astrid stared uncomprehendingly down where his long fingers wrapped around her own. “Do you speak the truth?” He asked, in something just above a whisper. His dark eyes locked on her blue. Was he  _ smiling? _

What  _ was _ this? Rhy’s face had changed from its usual quiet polite emptiness. Her husband, who went to her bed only when she wanted him there and who never looked at her at night, met her eyes with such _ intensity _ now. 

She had not married him out of any particular desire for him, and it was no more than thousands of women had done throughout history - many married to kings themselves. Astrid was no more unforgiveable than any number of them, and she would have argued significantly more forgivable, simply because she was a Dane, and the Danes only cared about forgiveness if it was one of them forgiving the other.

Athos had been the first to celebrate her plan to make herself an Arnesian queen. She had been the first to encourage him to stay on the throne in Makt, to make of themselves rulers of two kingdoms, legendary monarchs destined to be written into the history books of two different worlds.

She needed no forgiveness, for she had done nothing to hurt Athos, and those were the only sins that Astrid cared about.

Her husband, who had little scars from where she cut too deeply in bed sometimes, had a smile at the corner of his mouth and a warmth rising in his eyes that was… deeply unsettling. 

_ Just because of what grows in me? _

“Of course I speak truly,” Astrid snorted, but this moment was unfamiliar and her stomach flipped, as it always did these days, and she tried to still herself as the nausea came and went. In truth she should have figured it out sooner, but it hadn’t been until she’d gone to dinner a few weeks ago and been unable to drink Kell’s blood for the want to vomit it back up that she had realized what all her strange symptoms meant.

What the headaches, and the nausea, the way she sometimes threw up after breakfast… the odd sense that her life was incomplete without pickles from the larder and fresh iced cream, truly  _ meant. _

Lila leaned over, putting one of her hands atop hers, where she and Rhy’s fingers were still twined together. “Have you been seen? Have you spoken to a doctor or wise woman?” She asked, with quiet affection, and Astrid looked at her and thought,  _ I could have done worse in choosing someone to be beside me. You are wildfire in my bed and a demon and I adore you.  _

“Yes. It is confirmed by both. I will have a seer brought from Makt to read the child’s stars and we will know more then.”

“We should have an Arnesian look as well,” Rhy said, and Astrid fought the urge to ask him who he thought he was, having any suggestions as to what she would do with  _ her child _ . 

It made sense he would care, though. He had been… involved in its conception, after all. 

“We will see,” Astrid said tightly, “about that.” 

Lila whispered, with lips that barely moved, “You’re going to have a  _ child.” _

“Delilah,” Astrid murmured, leaning over to lean their foreheads together, closing her eyes, briefly. She tightened her grip on Rhy’s fingers as she did, and was surprised to feel him tighten his as well. When she glanced sidelong at him, his smile had widened.  _ Gods hung on the yarrow tree, are you  _ happy _ about this? _ “ _ We _ are with child,” Astrid continued, and realized only in the speaking of it that she spoke as much to her husband as to her _ Antari _ lover, her blade, her Delilah. 

She kissed Lila, gently, just the barest brush of lips. “This will cement our rule and our legacy.”  _ Arnes was mine before, but Arnes will belong to my children when I am gone, and that is our victory, Athos and Astrid Dane.  _

_ This is the blessing of the Danes: we take what we want, always, and so will my children. _

“Astrid…” She turned at his voice to look back at him, wondering once again what thoughts moved behind his dark eyes. He was the most graciously polite courtier she had ever seen. His every expression was a mask, a mask he had taught himself to wear to protect his mind from her. He was a man who should be wrecked by suffering, but who woke every day and watched the sunrise with the same small smile on his face that he wore now.

What was it like, to be imprisoned in your own palace but still greet each dawn with gratitude? Rhy remained a mystery. Kell was shattered anger, always breaking himself against his inability to fight her, but Rhy had acquiesced, had gone on one knee, and she thought between the two, it was Rhy who would last longer.

What was it like to be married against your will? Astrid would never know. She was twelve years old when she first declared to Athos and their mother that she would die before a man touched her who did not do so at her own command. Their mother had smiled indulgently. 

Athos had only put an arm around her and in total seriousness told her to never say such things, there was no need for her to die when they could simply kill any man who tried first.

“Can I tell my brother?” Rhy asked, and his eyes shone with something like tears.

“Don’t bring  _ Kell  _ into this,” Lila frowned, but then she saw the expression on Astrid’s face, and something in her own softened, hinted at a wicked little smile. “Unless you want to, Astrid?”

“Yes, you should tell him now,” Astrid said to Rhy, and settled herself back against the chaise, closing her eyes. Lila rested her head on her shoulder, and the weight was warm and familiar and reassuring. “I will call them. Holland should hear this, too, I know he’s in Arnes today spending time with Kell.” She murmured the order, knowing the two of them would feel the call no matter how far away they were, would feel compelled to answer it and obey.

She and Athos had enjoyed the days they’d spent experimenting, sending Holland further and further afield and then calling hm back, knowing the torture it put him through to go so far only to be forced to turn around over and over and over. 

That had hurt him more than the whippings. 

“Thank you, Astrid,” Rhy said quietly, and she opened her eyes to look at him again. He hadn’t let go of her hands, and Lila hadn’t let go either, and they were an odd trio. A queen, a king, and the queen’s lover.    


And somewhere down in the prisons, there was a king’s lover, too.

“Do you want to tell  _ him,  _ as well?” She asked, idly. Was it this  _ easy _ , to be kind to someone? Was it this easy, to do a thing that was simply nice, with no gain for herself? Was it so simple to give Rhy a reason to smile?

Astrid tightened her jaw. She wasn’t yet three months along and already the change in her body had nearly driven her out of her mind. The wise woman had warned her about this, that the early days would lead her to feel unfamiliar emotions more strongly than normal. She would have to visit the torture chambers to try and get them under control. 

“Can I?” Rhy looked surprised. “Would you let me tell Luc? I- I think he’ll want to know...”

“After we have finished with Kell and Holland, you may.”

Had Rhy ever said his name in front of her before? She didn’t think he had. They had left the man in the prisons as ‘he’ and ‘him’, and both of them always known who he meant. Astrid didn’t mind; kings kept lovers, after all. 

_ Perhaps I will bring him up out of the prison and put him in his own room, as a gift to Rhy for giving me children. On house arrest, of course.  _

_ But I think it would make Rhy smile like this, if I did. _

Gods, what was  _ wrong  _ with her?

“Thank you, Astrid,” He said again, with even more feeling in his voice this time. She may be buried in unwanted mercy and kindness right now, but she could still love the accomplishment inherent in having brought a king so low as to have to ask her permission to see his own lover. She put a hand over her stomach, wondering if it didn’t already feel just the barest bit rounder.

_ Girl, I will teach you how to make men kneel, and bleed, and kneel again, and then beg you at the end for more. Boy… well, Athos can teach you the same. _

It didn’t take long for her men to make it to the door. She called them in when they knocked, and by the time Kell and Holland stepped in, Rhy was standing next to the chaise lounge, arms crossed in front of him and one hand in front of his mouth. A smile still hung there, full of wonder and uncertainty. Lila and Astrid remained in the same position, lounging together, Astrid’s arm around behind her shoulders, her fingers idly running through the spiky hair Lila kept brutally short.

“Kneel to your queen,” Astrid commanded, and both of them did as told, Holland moving with grace and elegance to the floor and Kell forced down violently by the rune carved into his face. Astrid laughed, and watched Kell’s face flush with the fury that he could not let out. When she let them rise, Kell did not look at her, but instead his eyes went to his brother’s face.

“Rhy? Why do you look…”

Rhy looked at her, and Astrid had to strengthen herself against the nearly physical pleasure of knowing how many puppets danced on her strings. As she had the thought, her stomach flipped again, and she swallowed back bile that threatened to rise.

Now  _ this  _ she was ready to be rid of.

“Go ahead,” She said to him. “Tell them both.”

“I already know,” Holland said blandly. “You haven’t been able to drink our blood for weeks and you’ve been throwing up every morning. I’ve been waiting for you to finally give up and admit it. We’re not idiots.”

“Know what? What do we know?” Kell asked, looking around at all of them, baffled.

“Well,” Holland corrected himself without changing expression, but Astrid’s eyes narrowed at the hint of… was that  _ affection  _ in his voice? “ _ One  _ of us is an idiot.”

Rhy stepped forward, his hands out as if to ward off a blow, leaning over to whisper into Kell’s ear, the small awed smile widening on his face as he spoke. 

She sat back, as though seated in the front row at a play, and watched the blood drain from Kell’s face and his expression change from anger to dread. “What…?”

“It’s true,” Rhy said quietly. “She really is.”

Kell looked over at her and she felt her mouth water at the look of murder in those black and blue eyes. 

_ What did you  _ think  _ we did in here, Antari? Did your tutor not cover the responsibilities of kings and queens? Ah, but why would they… it’s not like you were ever a real prince. _

“Kell,” Rhy said, trying to get Kell to look at him, his voice soothing, “this is a  _ good thing.  _ Or… or it will be. I know this isn’t ideal, but I’ve always wanted-”

“Not with  _ her!”  _ Kell snapped, his voice a jagged edge. Astrid’s mouth went dry with something like lust at the pure unfiltered  _ grief  _ written across every inch of his face. “Not with  _ that bitch! Not after what she did, Rhy!  _ How can you be  _ happy  _ about this, how can you be  _ happy  _ about giving that bitch  _ anything?! _ ”

“Watch your tongue,” Lila said in a soft, deadly voice. A knife had appeared in one hand. Astrid had long ago stopped wondering where exactly she pulled them from. “That  _ bitch  _ is your  _ queen. _ ”

She threw the knife, and Kell, glaring, caught it in one hand effortlessly. Lila sat back, looking impressed. “Didn’t know you could do that.”

“I’ve been training,” Kell ground out between gritted teeth. 

“Nice,” Lila said, not to Kell but to Holland. “Your doing?”

Holland inclined his head, just slightly, but his eyes were still on Kell’s face, and Astrid was very,  _ very  _ interested in the concern she saw there.  _ Oh, Holland. You care too much. _

“Still.” Lila raised an eyebrow. “You should apologize to your queen.”

"She will  _ never _ be my-"

"Kell," Rhy interrupted, voice hard. "This is our life. It does you no good to spend your days angry that you do not live a different one. I have always wanted children, and this is my marriage, and I must live in it. Whatever you call her, she will be the mother of your nieces and nephews.”

Kell was a picture of furious unhappiness, and this was better than Astrid had felt all week. Even the nonstop nausea had lifted, a little. 

_ Someone else’s misery really is the best medicine. _

"No," Kell said, but it was softer. "She can't be. She  _ cannot  _ be with child."

"I'm not  _ that  _ old," Astrid said with a hint of a sardonic smile.

"It will be  _ my child,  _ Kell." Rhy put his hands on Kell's shoulders. "Can you at least  _ try  _ to feel something for it?"

"No! Because she shouldn't  _ get to-" _

"Well, she  _ did.  _ This is our  _ life,  _ Kell."

Kell jerked away from his brother. "No, this is not  _ life.  _ This is slavery. This is  _ hell,  _ Rhy!”

“This is  _ royal marriage,  _ Kell, and it’s only hell because you have decided to make it so!” Rhy finally shouted back. “It is our  _ life _ and we must make of it what we can. I for one cannot spend the rest of my life being miserable if I have any other option!!”

“My young men,” Astrid said gently. “Loud noise is not good for the babies.”

There was a pause, and all four of the people in the room turned slowly to look at her. 

"Babies?” Rhy asked, in a softer, wavering voice.

“Babies,” Holland said tiredly, putting a hand up to his forehead. “I knew it.”

“Babies?” Lila stared at her, and then clapped her hands together. “Babies!”

“There are two heartbeats, yes,” Astrid said smoothly. “So the Arnesian doctor tells me.”

“You have  _ got  _ to be joking,” Kell groaned. “Of course you would have twin monsters, you utter fucking hedge witch-”

“Kell.” Rhy’s voice was deeper. He did not shout again, but he was not far off. “Stop it.”

Kell glared at him. “I am not the villain here, Rhy, and I think you’re so busy making  _ the best of things  _ that you forgot that.”

“I think you should hold your tongue before you call my children monsters,” Rhy said evenly, and the two brothers, the light and the dark, stared at each other with uncharacteristic anger.

"Born of a monster," Kell said, in a deathly whisper.

"Born of  _ me. _ And a child is  _ innocent." _

"Not  _ their  _ children!"

"Those children will be just as much mine as hers, and you should watch yourself before you say something you'll regret later."

"Rhy, I can't. You're grasping on to  _ anything  _ to stay sane and I cannot follow you in this. They're going to raise them to be as evil as  _ they are!" _

"Evil is a point of view," Astrid murmured.

"You know what  _ my  _ point of view is-"

Holland put a hand on Kell’s shoulder. At Holland's touch, Kell’s tension collapsed and all the anger in him turned inward, to despair. He turned in Holland’s direction, putting a hand up over his, and Astrid felt herself lean forward, staring at the look on Kell’s face when his blue eye, glittering with angry tears, met Holland’s quiet green. 

_ Well, this is  _ very  _ interesting. _

“Calm,” Holland said softly. “Calm, Kell.”

“Holland, I-”

“Calm. Now is not the time.”

Kell nodded, slowly, and then turned back to look at Rhy. “My congratulations to you both on your illustrious fucking  _ blessing _ s,” He said with a voice that shook with hate, then turned on his heel and stalked out, hands already jammed deep in the pockets of his coat. 

Holland took a step in his direction, then paused. Astrid said softly, “You may.” She watched her first  _ Antari _ follow her third at a fast clip, wondering at what lives they lived when she did not have them right in front of her. Perhaps they did not sit in sullen silence or simply bash each other in the training ring all day after all.

“That could have gone better,” Rhy said to himself softly when Kell was gone. 

“Could have gone worse,” Lila offered. 

“Fair enough. I suppose he could have jumped off the balcony.”

“What, into the river? What possible good would  _ that _ do?”

“It would make him feel very much like a martyr and right now my brother would love a sword to fall onto dramatically, ideally where I can see him do it."

Lila grinned. "I could help with that."

"Lila, shush," Astrid murmured. "That's the king's own brother."

"He was  _ rude  _ to you! And rude to Rhy, at that!"

“ _ You  _ are rude to my husband every day,” Astrid laughed. “Why should you care if his brother is?”

“Because we’re _ us _ , the three of us. That's different."

Astrid blinked in surprise. Before she could say anything, Rhy said, "I will speak to him further. I'll see if I can't talk sense into him."

"It is fine, Rhy." Astrid smiled at her husband, and watched him give her that empty courtier's smile in return… but oh, his eyes still sparkled. "I expected that reaction."

_ Indeed, I loved it. What goes on in your mind, Rhy Maresh? What are you thinking, looking at me and seeing a woman who murdered your mother in cold blood and who carries your children within her? _

Everything had always gone according to Astrid Dane’s careful, meticulous planning. Everything except this. 

Rhy stood for a moment, staring at the open door where his brother had gone. “Astrid, may I go to the prisons for a while?”

Astrid closed her eyes. Lila’s spiky hair was poking wonderfully into the side of her neck. Her  _ Antari  _ was home, and she was carrying children she would raise to burn down any obstacle that stood in their way.

Ah.

She still had to tell Athos.

“Visit your lover in the prisons, Rhy,” Astrid said without opening her eyes. “I need to prepare for a trip to Makt tonight. I’ll take Lila with me. You and Kell may have the night to yourselves. Speak to him then.”

“I’m… not sure he’ll _ want _ to speak with me, but I will try. Also, I’m not dressed-”

“I fail to see how I should give a fuck. Get out. I want to  _ properly  _ greet my prodigal pirate upon her return, and your presence is not required this time.”

Rhy’s feet moved without his mind’s consent at the order. When he had gone, Astrid turned to kiss the top of Lila’s head. “We’re having twins, Lila,” She murmured to her.

“You and I and Rhy,” Lila said, a little teasingly. “A king, a queen, and  _ Antari _ . What a family for babies to have. Do you think he’ll want to name them?”

“All the gods forbid.” Astrid let her fingertips play along Lila’s neck, over her shoulder, trailing slowly down her arm. She felt her Delilah Bard shiver, pleasantly, against her. “You should congratulate your queen, Lila.”

Lila pulled back, smiling, and kissed her softly. “Congratulations, Astrid.”

“Not with words,” Astrid said, and raised an eyebrow. Lila looked over to the bed, and Astrid shook her head, hands going to the tie to her dressing gown. “Not with  _ words, _ ” She repeated, and Lila laughed, sliding gracefully to her knees on the floor. 

Astrid was in love with the whole world, in that moment.

Although that was partially because she currently owned quite a lot of it.


	18. One Day I Will Go Home (Prompt: Poetry)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Poetry. This is pre-ADSOM but fits with canon.

Holland had come here to look at the wall.

It was blended together by dozens of those who focused on earth elements, built of a mixture of living wood and earth from the ground below them. It stretched along the riverbank, as far as the eye could see. On each side the surface was largely flat, a slippery sort of wood with no bark to rough it up. 

He had been coming here since Ros was still king, in his furtive visits to a world he hated but could not stay away from. He’d found out about this festival and ever since, he’d been here for it. Even the Danes did not try to hold him.

Astrid and Athos had always understood the sharper pain came in seeing what you could not have, could not _ be. _It would have hurt less to be stretched out on the king’s rack tonight - so of course they let him leave, this same night each year, and smiled at each other when he asked permission to go.

There were couples walking by, arm in arm, giggling with their heads together. He could see two people who thought they were being very private kissing madly under the shadow of a building. Larger groups of men and women, some young and some old, chattered happily in Arnesian as they strolled along the riverbank. Holland watched them all, thankful it was at least dark.

He stuck out less in the dark, although that did not mean he fit in, either.

He watched a little dark-haired girl pick up a paintbrush and, giggling, dip it in red paint and paint two dots for eyes and a half-circle, making a smiling face. A woman he assumed was her mother praised her, and the two hugged. Some paint got in the woman’s hair and she laughed.

They laughed, they all laughed, but it was not laughter he could join.

He came each year to see this wall take shape.

The Festival of Colors, an Arnesian holiday, was probably his favorite of this spoiled little world’s celebrations. Solstice was quieter, and so he liked that one, too, but this one had all the color and life and beauty that his own world lacked. They built this wall, each year, and they painted it. People came from miles outside of London to put their mark on the wall, watch the paint dry, and be with friends and family. The wall stayed up for one week, and then the same group of magicians who had built it reappeared, and they gave all the magic inherent in the art back to the earth.

No one bled for this festival. No one cut their wrist, no one died, no one was sacrificed for a good harvest. No one suffered to please the gods. 

It was his favorite festival, and he _ hated _ them for it.

The people came and went, painting little pictures or messages on the wall. Sometimes it was like the little girl, hardly anything to write home about. One man off to the side was diligently working on what looked like an unsettlingly detailed portrait of Queen Emira herself, running back and forth as new colors were needed, an artist in his element, in the moment.

Holland stepped up to a woman surveying the wall, dressed in the telltale black and white the attendants of the festival wore, and cleared his throat. “May I try?” He asked politely. His accent took the Arnesian tongue and made it a little sing-song, soft on consonants and long on vowels. 

She turned to look up at him, and he saw her do the slightest double-take at his pale skin, faded mossy green eye, the black eye barely hidden underneath a bit of charcoal-black hair. His unfamiliar clothing, a little heavy and warm for such a magically comfortable location, gave him away. It always did.

But Astrid never allowed him to dress like them, and he wouldn’t have wanted to if he could. This wasn’t his world, and these were not his people.

“Of course,” She said, handing him a paintbrush from the pile she was holding in her hands. “Of course, _ aven _stranger. Everyone is welcome to add to the wall. You have come far to see us - please be welcome here.”

“Thank you for your welcome.” Holland smiled at her. It took some work; he had never been much for smiling, and it was harder these days than it had ever been. But he tried, and she smiled back at him, and so it must have been at least partially successful. 

He wandered down the riverbank, looking over the wall, trying to find the perfect spot. People looked at him, sometimes whispered behind their hands about him, but mostly they left him alone, and that was all right.

Dark hair, pale skin, heavy clothes, heavy boots, heavy weight on his shoulders. Someone had probably told the king and queen by now that he was here when he was not scheduled to be. There was no doubt a guard trailing his every move, reporting back everything he did.

That was fine. At least they did not bother him.

Holland appreciated time to himself, more so than probably anyone in this magic-soaked, arrogant, rotted-out little world.

Eventually he found the right place, a part of the wall that was still empty of color. There were buckets of paint everywhere, and he picked up the bucket of white and carried it with him. No one was using the white paint; why use white, when there were so many bright and vibrant colors to choose from?

He set himself up, glaring at anyone who came too close, and the combination of his black Antari eye and his expression kept everyone away. He dipped the brush in the white, tested a few strokes down by the ground, and then set to painting.

He didn’t paint a picture; he painted words. He wrote, carefully, fluidly, letting his fingers feel the scrape, too soft to even hear, of the bristles against the wood. This was a living wall, and tonight it would become a thousand pictures, a million colors clashing against each other. Later, the earth-magic users would return and dismantle it, and the riverbank would return to normal and everyone would forget, over time, the things they’d drawn and painted and written and sometimes carved into the wood.

Holland wrote until he had finished, and then he simply dropped the paintbrush into the dirt and walked away.

“At least clean it,” he heard someone mutter behind him, and ignored them. He put his hands in his pockets, and smiled a little to himself, and kept walking. Eventually, he began to hum to himself, an old Maktahn song he remembered Alox singing to him when he was very young.

Maybe he’d go see if the market had any blueberries tonight.

* * *

As crown prince, Rhy was meant to be inspecting the wall with dignity and gravity, taking note of those with exceptional talent for inclusion in the Royal Academy of the Arts, making conversation, generally being a well-bred representative of the crown.

What he was _ actually _doing was flirting shamelessly with a pretty commoner girl while Kell tried very hard not to roll his eyes and sigh.

They walked slower than Kell would like, but he never left Rhy’s side, ignoring the prattle of the girl (who, if he was honest with himself, wasn’t prattling at all but was instead actually fairly well-educated in the arts and knew more about it than he did), trying to ignore the knowledge of Rhy’s arm around her waist. She was glittering, so surprised to be the center of the prince’s attention, and Rhy was all smiles and soft dark eyes. 

It was annoying, and Kell did not look forward to trying to sleep through what he would probably hear through the door that connected their rooms tonight. Not that he wasn’t perfectly used to that by now.

Then a burst of white on the wall caught his eye and he stopped.

Rhy nearly kept walking, too locked in quiet conversation with the girl, but he looked up, blinking. “Kell? What is it?”

“Look,” Kell said, and pointed. “Holland’s been here.”

“Why do you say that?” Rhy frowned. “What is that on the wall? It looks like someone drawing sticks. Or like they dumped a bunch of sticks in paint and threw them at the wall.”

“It’s Maktahn. Who else would write in Maktahn here but Holland Vosijk?”

“You?”

“Yes, Rhy, I snuck out here by myself, wrote in Maktahn, and then pretended I didn’t so I could surprise you with it.”

“You’re right.” Rhy rubbed at his chin thoughtfully with his fingers. “Doing something nice to surprise me is absolutely not something you would ever do.”

“Oh, shut up, you ass.”

“You first, prick.”

The two brothers grinned at each other.

“Ugh, boys,” The pretty girl muttered, but she was smiling. “Royal or common, boys are the same.”

Rhy looked back at the writing on the wall. “What did he write?”

Kell felt a surge of anger he couldn’t quite explain. How dare Holland be here and not tell someone, announce himself? How dare he not tell _ him, _at least? Then he read the poem and the anger faded all at once, dropped out of him, left something else in its place. “It’s a poem.”

“A what?” Rhy laughed, not exactly derisively - Rhy didn’t have a mean bone in his body, and any attempt to sound sarcastic or cruel mostly just came out cheerful and enthusiastic. “Why would he come all the way here to write a _ poem? _” Kell shook his head, looking distant already, and Rhy sighed. “Kell, don’t do this. You always get this look whenever he’s involved in something.”

“It's just a surprise, is all.” It was surprising that he had been here. It was more surprising to see what he had written.

“He’s allowed to travel here just to look around if he wants, Kell. You know that. I’m sure Mother and Father have someone watching him.”

“It's just surprising,” Kell repeated, but without any real rancor, moving towards the wall and away from his brother. As he did, the guards that had been keeping an unobtrusive distance came closer. 

“It’s none of our business what Holland Vosijk does or does not do,” Rhy pointed out. “Come on, Kell, let’s go.” When Kell didn’t answer, Rhy rolled his eyes. “I’m going to walk away if you don’t come back.” Kell ignored him, picking a paintbrush up off the ground, stained with white along the bristles, frowning at it. Then he dipped it in a bucket of water, carefully cleaning it off, and began to hunt around the buckets of colored paint.

Rhy snorted. “Fine. Have it your way. We’re leaving.”

“Right,” Kell said faintly, finding the color he wanted with a faint smile. 

“Kell, promise me that one day we’ll have a _ talk _about why you need to learn to leave Holland Vosijk alone.” Rhy turned to his pretty new friend, offering her his arm. “Shall we?” She smiled and nodded, and Rhy left Kell there, dipping his paintbrush in blue and beginning to paint, his own Maktahn stilted and formal rather than intuitive like Holland’s, just below his.

When he finished, he stood back, carefully cleaned the paintbrush off in the water, and gave it back to one of the attendants. He turned to say something to Rhy, only to realize that his brother had at some point walked away. Wait, is that what he’d been saying when he was talking, earlier? Kell had just ignored him, he’d been so distracted... 

_ You always do this when Holland’s involved in something. _

Do what? All he’d done was answer him, let him know it had been seen.

Kell walked off, not quite stomping his feet, wondering why he’d even bothered to paint a reply. It wasn’t like Holland would come back to see it.

It wasn’t like he cared if he did.

* * *

Holland came back, popping blueberries into his mouth, enjoying the surprise of this one being sweet and the other so tart his eyes burned. Some you had to chew, some just sort of melted away inside your mouth.

He didn’t know if there had ever been blueberries in Makt. He’d never seen any, not until he came here to Arnes. If he could bring any one fruit back with him to grow, it’d be blueberries, but… would they grow there? He looked down at the small box he held in his hand, with even more.

Maybe he’d try planting some in the garden. The _ real _garden behind the kitchens, not the stone one out front. There was a little girl who worked in the kitchens who liked to spend time out there, she’d probably like blueberries…

He really only came one more time to see what he’d painted. Just once more, before he left for the night, to go back to his wan, pale world. But he wanted to see it when it dried, maybe touch it up a bit, maybe just take one last look with the knowledge that if he came back again, it would be unmade, gone, like he had never written there at all.

His life felt like that, sometimes; he had been written with someone else’s hand, and when he was unmade, no one would ever know he had been here.

He could see some blue paint beneath his own white and frowned, hoping no one had painted over it entirely before it had even dried.

Then he came closer, and realized the blue paint was writing… written in his own language. Holland stared at it for a long time, teeth grinding together, knowing exactly who had answered him. No one else in this whole world knew Maktahn well enough to write it so fluently, just Kell Maresh.

Only Kell Maresh would write something like _ this. _

He swallowed, staring without blinking until his eyes burned, until he could see the words when he closed his eyes, written in blurred red against the inside of his eyelids. 

Only Kell Maresh.

Then he turned and walked away. It was time to head home; they would be waiting for him to return, waiting for him, always waiting. Smiles like the things children see hiding under their beds, hands like claws waiting to pull him in. They would be waiting on their thrones for him to kneel, but the joke would be on them, just this once.

When he closed his eyes to kiss their hands, he would see Kell Maresh’s writing instead of them.

Written on the wall, in white:

_I have bled into a river  
I have bled upon cold stone_  
_ I have bled into their mouths_  
_ One day, I will go home_

_The blood runs thinner every year_   
_ My heart is made of stone_   
_ I feel nothing but the loss_   
_ One day, I will go home_

_I do not pray; the gods don’t answer_   
_ I am skin and magic and bone_   
_ It never ends, but still I know_   
_ One day, I will go home_

_ One day I will go home. _

Written just beneath it, in Kell Maresh’s carefully-painted blue:

_I have bled into the water_   
_ I have bled upon the stone_   
_ I have bled for king and country_   
_ Where will you go when you go home?_

_Stone hearts can be turned back again_   
_ Thin blood can still run strong _   
_ I want to help you find your way_   
_ Where will you go when you go home?_

_I know no gods but still I pray_   
_ For your skin and magic and bone_   
_ If home is the people you have loved_   
_ Who will you see when you go home, Antari?_

_ Who will you see when you go home? _


	19. Halloween in June (Prompt: Mythology)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can also call this Holland and Kell's fourth date! Sort of. Although they've been on a LOT since the last fic based on timeline. Takes place seven - eight months after the talk on Russian literature.

“I can’t believe you didn’t even try to get a costume,” Rhy said, adjusting the crown of grapes and leaves he’d spray-painted gold where it rested on top of his head as they got out of the car. The Uber driver waved at them and then pulled away, and they stood on the sidewalk in front of a small duplex that had a bunch of skeletons and ghosts on sticks stuck into the front lawn.

No other lawn had decorations like that… because it was June.

“I _ did, _ ” Kell said, gesturing down at himself. He wasn’t wearing a flannel, because even if he had a close personal relationship with all eleven he owned, it was still _ June, _ after all, but the jeans and a pair of beat-up brown boots were the same. The only difference was his T-shirt, which tonight simply read _ SERIAL KILLER _in horror-movie-style writing across the front.

“That is not a fucking costume. That’s a novelty T-shirt.”

“I’m dressed as a serial killer!” Kell said, throwing his hands up in the air. “They look like everyone else!”

“Oh my God, you’re such a douche.” Luc adjusted the headband he was wearing, two shockingly realistic goat-horns sticking up out of his light-brown, wavy hair. The blue stone above his left eyebrow caught the sun and Kell could have murdered him on the spot for A. being an asshole and B. managing to look good dressed up as an actual fucking goat.

“You are seriously the absolute worst, Kell.” Rhy had taken the Danes’ suggestion of ‘mythology’ as a theme for their Halloween party 100% seriously, right down to his carefully draped toga, the rope sandals he’d spent a _ month _ looking for, and the glass of wine he was currently sloshing around in one hand, a bundle of actual grapes held in the other. “How hard would it have been to just _ pick something? _ This party is your graduation party, too, you know! I got us an Uber here, I’m getting us an Uber home, have fun!”

“Okay, first off, it’s absolutely not. Secondly, Luc barely even dressed up, why aren’t you mad at him?”

“What the fuck ever, you ass.” Luc cheerfully punched Kell in the arm, who winced and rubbed at the spot. “I’m one of Rhy’s _ followers. _I’m a… goat person.”

“Pan,” Rhy said airily. “You’re a pan. Dionysus was often followed by pans, because he is the embodiment of fertility-"

"And drunkenness!" Luc sing-songed. "You said the pans are super horny, right? Does this mean I get to hit on everyone tonight?"

"You do that anyway," Kell groaned. "You _ both _do that anyway."

"Yeah, but this time with _ my god's permission. _ " Luc grabbed Rhy around the shoulders and pulled him close. "Hey, god, do the goat guys get to _ sleep _with Dionysus?"

"Oh, it's heavily implied," Rhy said sweetly. “Will you call me your god while we do it?”

“I’m going to fucking murder you both,” Kell said, face blazing red. 

“Oh, then you really _ will _be a serial killer!”

“No…” Rhy trailed off. “I think you have to kill like four people at four different times for that, right? I think this would be a crime of passion, or… fratricide. Or something.”

“We should ask the Danes,” Luc said thoughtfully. “They have all those documentaries and books on serial killers, they probably know how to define it. They probably have an FBI agent on fucking speed dial.”

“They’re definitely on _ somebody’s _ watch list, and they have those books because they’re _ in goddamn training, _ ” Kell snapped. “I’m surprised no one’s gone missing from their gigs before now. Can we just go in before I remember we’re going to a Halloween party on _ June 15th? _”

“Yeah, because the Danes are doing their big national tour this fall, and Athos didn’t want to miss out on the party. Have some fun for once in your life, Kell.”

Kell paused, swallowing back about five different snappy retorts that would almost certainly not come out right if he tried to say them, then asked grudgingly, “Where’d you get the goat stuff anyway, Luc?”

“My little sister helped me, she’s super into cosplay and has all kinds of weird shit in her room from DragonCon. She helped me make the pants. Pretty cool, right? She _ painted them _to look like fur.”

“And you’re not wearing a shirt because…”

“Why would goats wear shirts? Think it through, Kell. Plus, she _ made _ the goat horns headband thing! I had to pay her like $250, she’s not cheap, but it looks _ so good. _Isn’t she awesome?”

“Okay, yeah,” Kell said grudgingly. “Your sister is pretty cool, that’s true. So how did she end up with a total piece of trash like you as her brother?”

“She lost the genetic lottery,” Luc said, utterly unoffended. “Or I won it, depending on your perspective. One way or the other. Come on, let’s go in, the neighbors are admiring us.”

“Is admiring what they’re doing, numbnuts?”

“Shut up, serial killer. Go murder some Fruit Loops.”

Kell stared at him blankly.

“Serial killer, _ cereal… _ Have you never seen _ Hackers?” _

“Have I never seen what?”

“Rhy, your brother is uncultured swine.”

“I know,” Rhy said cheerfully. “But he’s _ my _uncultured swine and I love him, so let him be.”

“Ugh, only because you’re such a good brother. Anyway, No Fun McStupidCostume, knock on the door, maybe your boyfriend will answer.”

“He’s not my-... I mean, he _ is _, but I feel like I’m kinda old to call him… ugh, never mind.” Kell stomped up to the front door, Rhy and Luc right behind him, and rang the doorbell. 

It swung open to reveal Athos Dane, the only person Kell knew taller than he himself was, grinning at him with the brightest, most horrifyingly cheerful expression Kell had ever seen him wear. He was wearing all white - white pants with white suspenders over a white button-up shirt, with a black derby hat and eyelashes painted on his face along the underside of one eye. He’d pulled his hair back into a long, low ponytail. “Finally! We get you to our apartment!” He called over his shoulder, “Astrid, they got Kell to come!”

“Yay!” Came a muffled female voice from inside. “Tell him Holland is naked, he’ll get inside faster if you do!”

“I am _ not naked! _ ” Holland yelled angrily from somewhere further inside, and Kell felt his face burn red again. “I am _ still getting dressed, _give me a minute! I’ll be out in just a second!”

Athos opened up the door and Kell stepped inside, thinking that he’d been dating Holland for nearly seven months now and he’d never actually been to his place before - largely because of the hulking platinum-blond man (and his smaller, but otherwise largely identical twin sister) who was ushering him inside.

He stepped into a perfectly normal living room, with a regular couch, a small chair, and a futon-couch pushed against the wall. There were already at least a dozen people, and the party had only just begun. The Danes had gone all out - the walls were hung with black and orange streamers, sugar skull pictures, someone had drawn a ghost on the wall, and he was pretty sure there were at least three framed photos of famous serial killers… and one was autographed.

Athos gave Luc a one-shouldered hug. “You holding tonight?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Not tonight, man, I’m just here to enjoy _ your _shit this time.”

“Great, because Astrid made a new friend a couple towns over and you are gonna _ love this. _ Come on.” Then he paused, looking Kell over. “You’re not wearing a costume.”

“Yes, I am! Look!” Kell, exasperated, pointed at the words on his shirt.

Athos snorted. “That doesn’t count. Cool shirt, though.” He paused. “Give it to me.”

“What?”

“I said give me your shirt. Hey, Astrid! Kell didn’t wear a costume!”

Astrid appeared as if by magic at Athos’s elbow, and Kell jumped, wondering how she even _ did that. _He looked to Rhy and Luc for help but they were already halfway into the kitchen, yelling hellos to whoever was in there. Kell thought he heard Lila Bard yell back. 

“Oh,” Astrid said, looking at him critically. “This won’t do at all.”

“I am a _ grown adult- _”

“I don’t care,” She said, waving a hand with a very large butcher knife in it. She was wearing the most form-fitting black suit he’d ever seen in his life, her hair braided, with a top-hat resting at a perilous angle on top of it that somehow never fell, as if it was too scared of her to dare. “Holland worked really hard on his costume, we can’t let him down by having you show up looking like _ this, _can we?”

“He did? But I thought we agreed not to-" Oh, shit. How did he and Holland always miss each other on stuff like this? “I, um. I don’t have anything else-”

“That’s okay,” Astrid said with a predatory smile. “I already got one for you, because Rhy _told_ me you were like this.”

“So take your fucking shirt off,” Athos said flatly, and the good humor dropped off his face so fast Kell flinched. “Holland worked really hard on this for you, Kell.”

“He really did,” Astrid said in a voice that wasn’t quite a purr, moving closer. Kell swallowed against the residual sense of _ fucking creepy _that hung around the Danes wherever they went. “It’s not the party theme but we forgave him because he was so happy when he thought of it.”

“We did,” Athos said, nearly in Kell’s ear. “Because he was _so_ _excited _about it. Holland doesn’t _get _excited about things.”

“He just sighs all the time,” Astrid murmured, twisting her fingers in the front of Kell’s shirt. “Sighs and sticks his nose in a book and writes his thesis and mutters about that book he's going to write... and when he does, we're going to make sure it gets published.”

“Wh-what book?”

“You’ll see. Here’s the thing, though, Kell Maresh.” Astrid pulled him slightly closer by his shirt and Kell stumbled forward. “For you, my brother gets excited about things. So let’s give him something to be excited about.”

“I, uh-”

“We had a meeting,” Athos said smoothly. “Astrid and I took a vote and we _ unanimously _ liked him. Mother took the meeting notes. He’s our real brother now, just like you and Rhy are real brothers. Got it? We help our family. We _ help _ Holland.”

Astrid jerked on the front of his shirt again. “So take-”

“Your-” Athos, in his ear.

“Shirt-” Astrid, in his other ear.

“Off,” They finished, in unison.

“Will you promise to never, ever talk like that again if I do?” Kell asked, and his voice cracked. 

“Hmmm… I can promise to _ try _ ,” Astrid said brightly, pulling away all at once. “Here, I’ll show you what I got for you.” She grabbed Kell by one hand and pulled him away, down a short hallway. He could hear Holland muttering to himself behind one closed door and had the irrational urge to yell _ save me, please _but before he could, Astrid had opened the door to her room and all but flung him inside.

Her bedroom was perfectly normal at first glance. Just a bed covered in a pile of blankets and pillows, a desk in the corner with a laptop, blinds over the windows but no curtains. Something was _ off _about it, though, and after a second Kell realized the bed was just… sitting in the middle of the room, it wasn’t against a wall or anything at all. Just sitting there.

“Why is your bed-”

“Shut up,” Astrid said, tossing the butcher knife onto her bed and flinging open the sliding doors to the closet. “Shirt off.”

Kell sighed and pulled his shirt off over his head while she rummaged through her closet. “What are you and Athos dressed as, anyway? Neither of those looked like mythology.”

“I’m Jack the Ripper,” Astrid said. “Hence the knife. Although I would probably have the knife anyway, no matter what I went as.”

“That’s not-”

“Oh, it sure as hell fucking is. He’s mythology _ now. _ Folklore. Just because something was real doesn’t make it not a myth at the same time. Athos is Alex from _ A Clockwork Orange. _”

“That is also not mythology, and I’ve never seen that. I had to read the book in a class, though.”

“Athos gets what he wants, and what he wants tonight is to be Alex from _ A Clockwork Orange _.” Astrid popped her head back out, then paused, her eyes going from the top of his head to midway through his torso and stopping there. “Holy shit, has Holland seen what you look like with your shirt off?”

“We’ve been dating for more than half a year,” Kell said dryly, crossing his arms in front of himself self-consciously. “Take a fucking guess.”

“Just wondered if he knew you’re all scarred up like that.”

“He knows,” Kell said. He didn’t have a ton of them or anything, but there were ten or twelve old marks on his upper arms and his torso and back that never really went away. It was one reason he never went swimming except at the Maresh and Taskon family homes, where they already knew about them. “He said he didn’t care.”

“Yeah, he’s got some, too, on his arms mostly - you’ve seen those. From when he was homeless.”

“When he was _ what now? _”

“Ask him sometime. That was before Mother met his dad. What happened to you, anyway? Let's see, that's an _ old _ knife wound on your shoulder - somebody stabbed you? What, when you were like three? - and that one on your ribs looks like a cigarette burn, I left one of those on a guy once-”

“I don't know how I got them,” Kell said flatly. “And that’s gross.”

“Oh, he _ asked _ me to. Stop being so vanilla. Besides, I was just curious.” Astrid didn’t seem to even notice she was being rude as hell, instead looking at him with a wide-eyed curiosity and fascination that was somehow even worse. She tossed something plaid, red and blackish-green, onto the bed, then a black leather belt with some kind of weird bag hanging off of it. Finally, a fake sword… at least he hoped it was fake.

“I don’t remember anything before the foster homes. Can we please stop talking about it? You’re not my _ contract-mandated therapist, _and I don’t tell her shit, either.”

“You have a therapist mandated by a _ contract? _” Astrid whistled.

“Yeah, Maxim thinks it will help me be better at helping Rhy run the company later.”

“Rich people are _ weird. _I can’t wait to be one someday and use all my money to cover up my crimes.” Astrid wasn’t smiling, and Kell genuinely couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

“Yeah, I know. And anyway, like I said, I don’t remember how I got them.”

“If you don’t remember, why does it bother you?” Astrid smiled and gestured to the items on the bed. “Here. Put this on. Athos and I have lots of stuff we don’t remember, it doesn't bother us."

“In your case, it’s because of all the drugs and also potentially because you murder people while blackout drunk.”

"That's a definite possibility, but I feel like I would want to remember any murders I committed.”

“Does that mean you_ haven’t _murdered anyone yet?”

She winked at him. “The night is still young, Mareshka.”

Kell picked up the plaid thing, frowning. “Astrid… this is a skirt.”

“No,” Astrid said patiently. “It’s a _ kilt, _ and they are _ very manly. _ I had to guess your size, but I’m really good at knowing a guy’s size on sight, actually, it’s a gift. Congratulations, Kell, you’re going to our party as a Celtic warrior god. I wrote his name down somewhere, but you know, it’s probably better if I don’t try to pronounce it. Besides…” She raised one eyebrow. “Holland will like it, I promise. He has pictures of men in kilts on his computer.”

“He _ does?” _ He looked it over again. “How would you know that?”

“Because we go through his stuff when he’s not home.”

“Ah… of course you do. Do you guys… even _ do _morals?"

**"**Look, we voted him in as one of us, that means we share our stuff. That’s how it works. That's morals. He knows that.”

“Does he, though?” Kell looked down at the kilt again. “I guess you did say Holland went to all the effort…” 

“He really did,” She said, then stood, crossing her arms. “Well? Get naked.”

Kell stared at her. “Not getting naked, and definitely not getting naked _ in front of you. _”

“Aren’t you gay? Besides, you’re my brother’s boyfriend, you’re basically family, too. Danes have no secrets."

“Ugh. First off, that is not how being bothered by things _ or _family works, I get to have privacy if I want it no matter what. Secondly, I’m bi-”

“You _ are? _” Astrid’s eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together. “Does that mean a threesome is-”

“It is _ not. _”

Her face immediately fell again. “Well, fuck. Your brother is _ way _ more fun than you. Fine, I’ll leave you to it, but I better not see you wearing a shirt or I’ll make Athos take it off you with his _ teeth _.” She left him there, sweeping the butcher knife back into her hand as she went, and Kell stared around. Her room smelled like some kind of weird incense and it had all of her stuff in it and he was deeply uncomfortable for reasons he could not adequately explain to himself.

It was just a room. She hardly even slept here, probably, they were always crashing at other peoples’ places after their gigs or out on the road. 

Still. That bed just sitting there in the middle of the room was just… _ wrong. _He’d never even seen a bed that wasn’t against a wall before.

He took his boots and jeans off, his heart beating hard against the inside of his chest as he folded everything neatly and sat it on Astrid’s bed. He was going to look fucking ridiculous, and he was a grown man... but everyone else was wearing a costume, and they had said Holland had worked really hard on his…

Well. 

He put the kilt on, fastened the black leather belt onto it, put his boots back on, and finally picked up the sword (which, thank God, was actually fake). Astrid had one of those full-length mirrors in the corner of the room, just sat right on the floor, and he couldn’t quite see to the top of his head, but he could see the costume.

“Of course I have to show my goddamn scars at this party,” He muttered. Really, though, it didn’t look _ that _ bad… Holland was the only person whose opinion mattered here, anyway, and he’d seen them already. He’d _ kissed _most of them already. Kell had seen Holland’s, too, he just hadn’t known…

“He was _ homeless _ when he was a teenager _ ? _” Kell asked himself out loud. How much of Holland’s life was still a total mystery to him, anyway? They gave each other details grudgingly, bits and pieces, over the months… but how long would it take to feel like they actually knew each other?

He came back out to the rapturous delight of Astrid, who clapped him on the back and stuck a drink in his free hand. Rhy had his phone out taking photos, shouting merrily to everyone that peer pressure was _ definitely _all it was cracked up to be if it got Kell into a costume, and Luc just… winked at him.

“I’m going to fucking kill you if you do that again, _Dracula Backwards_.”

“Eat shit and die, Cú Chulainn,” Luc said brightly.

“That’s Irish,” Astrid snapped. “This is Celtic. There’s a difference.”

“Is there? Turns out I don’t give a damn.”

“Don’t say that to Bard,” Astrid said, one finger up in warning. “Her mom’s Irish and they give _ so much of a damn _about what counts as what over there.”

“Don’t say what to me?” Lila popped up, arm-in-arm with Athos. She was wearing a long black wig and had ringed her eyes in black eyeliner so thickly she looked like a skull. With a red lipstick that was nearly black in and of itself and a draping black dress, she looked like…

“Are you a witch?” Kell asked, tilting his head.

“I’m _ Hel. _”

“... yes that’s true, but what are you dressed as?” He gave her a one-sided smile, and she smiled back, and Kell maybe wasn’t all the way out of love with her, he thought. His heart skipped just a little whenever she smiled at him in that way she didn’t smile at anyone else.

“Hel. Norse goddess of the underworld? Come on, Kell, you _ saw Thor: Ragnarok _, right?”

“Oh! Cate Blanchett! Between her and the guy who plays Thor, I, uh, don’t remember a lot of that movie. I mean, I remember his hair…”

“... you’re hopeless. Athos and I are going to go start a fire out back, anyone want to come make s’mores?”

“Yes,” Athos said blandly. “_ That’s _ why we’re starting the fire. For s’mores. No other reason.”

“No thank you. Is… Is Holland out yet? Stop taking _ pictures, _Rhy!”

“No way. This may never happen again, I have to post this on every social media account I have everywhere forever. You know who would fucking _ love this, _is Tumblr, they are all on the mythology shit over there and with your red hair, this is honestly pretty hot.”

“Kill me now, God,” Kell said plaintively with his eyes to the sky, but God stubbornly refused to help him out. “Please don’t, Rhy, you know I don’t like people seeing my-” He cut himself off, but saw Rhy’s face change, just a little.

Astrid and Athos Dane exchanged a look of deep, fascinated interest.

“Oh, right. Sorry, I forgot. I won’t post anything,” Rhy said a little softer, sticking his phone somewhere in the folds of his toga, and only Rhy Maresh would have had a cell phone pocket professionally sewn into his toga for a party. “I’m just kidding you. I won’t post them anywhere, I promise. Speaking of changing the subject, Luc, didn’t you say Melody is coming? Is she here yet?”

“Melody?” After waiting for the lightning strike that did not come, Kell just chugged the entire drink Astrid had given him and hoped that would at least make him care less. “The barista from my coffeeshop?”

“You are not the only person who goes to that place, you know,” Luc said. “And yes, she should be here pretty soon. I think she’s coming as Persephone, she dyed her hair a new color just for this. I gave her some money out of your wallet last time we went out with her, she promised to bring just like a _ fuck _ton of pomegranates.”

“Cool. Aw, I should have done Hades instead of Dionysus,” Rhy said sadly, looking down at himself. “I love that story and Melody is super cute. Oh well.”

“But I like getting to be your horny goat lover!”

“Jesus God.” Kell put a hand up over his face. “I fucking hate you, Luc.”

“Well, I _ love _all the colors your face turns, so I guess you’ll just have to get used to me, since Rhy and I are going to get married and have like a billion babies.”

“You’re _ what? _”

Rhy grinned. “I already spoke to Astrid, she’s going to be our surrogate. Twins run on the mom’s side, so we figured, why not try for twins?”

Kell blinked, staring at his brother. “How would you and Astrid... never mind. Wouldn’t she have to stop doing drugs to do that?”

“Kell, remind me to tell you how babies are made sometime. Also… Right.” Rhy frowned. “That probably wouldn’t work, then. Anyway, Luc, let’s get some s’mores.”

They left - everyone he_ knew _left to go out back - and Kell was left standing with a whole bunch of people in costumes that he didn’t know, most of them Astrid and Athos Dane’s band mates, fans, or friends, and all of them ignoring him completely and vaguely unsettling to be around. He poured himself another drink from the giant crystalline punchbowl set up on a table in the kitchen, wondering how long it was going to take Holland to come out.

He’d nearly finished the second drink and was standing in the living room by himself feeling like the most awkward person in the entire world, with the warmth of the alcohol just starting to finally settle into his shoulders and get them down from somewhere up near his chin, when he heard Holland’s door open. Kell looked up to greet him as he came out of the hallway.

“Astrid, can you help me with-” Holland’s voice died in his throat as he and Kell stared at each other.

Holland was wearing a three-piece tweed suit with a white shirt collar and a dark gray tie that hung just slightly crooked. The suit was old-fashioned with baggy suit pants and slightly pointed leather shoes, a tweed newsboy cap that perfectly matched held in one hand, and a gold chain hanging from the button of the suit’s vest to a pocket just to the side. He’d even cut his hair into an undercut, almost shaved towards the bottom and longer on top. His black glasses somehow fit in with everything else and he looked so _dapper _Kell nearly felt his knees buckle.

“Kell,” Holland said, slightly choked-off. “You’re not wearing… you’re dressed as-... You look good.”

Kell had never known he liked to see men in suits before, but the awareness came to him all at once looking at _ Holland _wearing one. His mouth was suddenly dry and he took a drink, but it didn’t seem to help. 

He tried to say _ you look really fucking hot _but what he said instead was, “Guh.”

“I thought you didn’t do costumes,” Holland said, his words slow, as though he were trying very hard to carefully place them. 

“I don’t. Astrid made me wear this. What are you dressed as?”

“I’m Tommy Shelby from _ Peaky Blinders. _ It's not mythology, but I just figured… . Ah. Um.” Holland looked around the living room. “Where _ is _Astrid? My tie is crooked.”

Someone turned on some music, blaring loud through the speakers Astrid had set up all around the duplex. _ They never saw us comin’ til they hit the floor, they just kept beggin’ for more, more... _

“Your tie is… I hadn’t noticed your tie.” Kell put his cup down, hoping it at least was on a table but honestly he didn’t even care any longer, stepping up to Holland, head slightly tilted. A little of his red hair fell over his eyes and he shook it out. “I could fix it for you.”

_Fuck, he's wearing that cologne from Iceland again._

“Can you? Can you do ties, I thought you said…”

The music blared around them. First_ one up was a preacher’s son, last one down was an Englishman, I’m in bed with his bowtie on, all dressed up for a hit and run... _

“No,” Kell said, reaching up to take the tie in one hand, pulling the other man to him. “I can’t do ties for shit.” He kissed Holland, feeling one of his hands up on his bare shoulder, the other putting the newsboy cap on and then touching his side, just a little, with his fingertips. Some people in the living room behind them said something teasing, but he didn’t really hear it and actually discovered he didn’t give a damn. Holland’s hands were always a little cold, something to do with blood circulation, and Kell shivered a little at his touch. “Music’s really loud.”

“Yeah,” Holland breathed out, swallowing hard. 

“I like the suit.”

“I like you in a kilt.”

Kell tried to say something sexy like _ I think I’ll like you even better not wearing the suit _ but when he opened his mouth he said, “Bedroom haven’t seen now drink.”

_ What the fuck was that? _

“What?” Holland was smiling, though, at him, and it definitely wasn’t fair to have Holland wearing a suit and smiling at the same time. “What did you say?”

“I have _ no idea _. My brain cells died again.”

“I think we just have four left between us at this point.”

The song had changed. _ I’m a killer, cold and wrathful, silent sleeper, I’ve been inside your bedroom. I’ve murdered half the town, left you love notes on their tombstones… _

“Astrid and Athos listen to really fucking creepy music,” Kell said softly. He hadn’t let go of Holland’s tie. He seemed to be physically incapable of convincing himself to unwrap his fingers from the cloth that felt like silk, like…

“Yeah,” Holland said. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to make Kell let go, either. “They have a whole playlist for this party that’s like this. She literally labeled it Serial Killer Gap Year, which… what the fuck is _ that _? But they have ‘Jack the Ripper’ on the playlist somewhere, too, just for you.”

“Really? Is it the AFI cover or Morrissey?” 

“They have both. I was listening to the Morrissey one earlier when I was getting dressed, actually.”

“Holland… do you even _ like _ Morrissey?”

“_ You _ do. I think I still have the song up on my computer-”

“Let’s go in your room,” Kell said quickly. “We could listen to it. A lot.” He tightened his grip, just a little, on the tie.

Holland’s eyes went down, slightly, to Kell’s hand, and then back up to his face. Something in his expression shifted, not in a bad way, but that look of weirdly focused intensity he got sometimes when they were talking, usually right before they stopped talking and started doing _ other _ things. “Are you sure? It took me like half an hour to get this suit on right.”

“I bet I can take it off faster than that,” Kell said in a low voice, and then blinked. Had _ he _just said that? Out loud? With his mouth?

_ Do all men in suits do this to me or just him? _

Holland stared at him wide-eyed. “Ah. Um. You want to?” He swallowed, and it shifted his shirt collar a little bit, and Kell’s brain just went away for a half-second and then came back with very definite ideas about what he wanted to do with this tie now.

“Do you not?” He asked, heart pounding. “If you don’t, we don’t have to-”

“Fuck these people and fuck this suit.”

_ Yes that last one's kind of the idea. _

Holland backed up into the hallway, Kell pulled along with him thanks to the grip he still had on his tie. “I don’t give a shit about anyone here but you. Music’s loud enough no one can hear anything and I bet I can get your kilt off faster than you can undo my tie.”

“What do I get if I win?”

“I think we both win either way, Kell. Promise to help me put the suit back on afterward?"

"Promise." Kell let the fake sword drop to the ground with a clatter and followed him into the bedroom, slowly starting to smile.


	20. Before Anything Else (Prompt: Weird)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Weird
> 
> Some Rhy/Kell kid-bonding. Consider it a sequel to As Long as Rhy Climbs (Chapter 6). Pre-ADSOM, fits with canon.

“Am I weird?” Rhy was swinging his legs where he and Kell sat on a wrought-iron bench in the garden, schoolbooks open and totally ignored beside them. Kell had managed to scare off the latest in a series of well-meaning tutors (at Rhy’s instigation, not that Emira ever admitted anything was Rhy’s fault if Kell was involved - it meant  _ he _ didn’t get in trouble but also, it made him feel guilty, so he tried not to ask Kell to do things too often) so they were largely on their own until the new tutor arrived. 

This last one had been particularly easy, though; all Kell had done was stare at him. Just… stare, with his hair swept up and away from that black eye. After a week of that, the tutor had packed his things up and gone, muttering things about the  _ aven vares  _ being a curse and not a blessing.

Kell hadn’t minded; it wasn’t the first time someone had been unnerved by the black eye. He hadn’t even seemed to mind Emira’s lecture, or Maxim’s anger. All he’d done was look to Rhy, and Rhy had smiled and made faces behind his parents’ backs while they alternately yelled and deadly-anger-whispered, and Kell had struggled not to smile right back.

He and Kell were just the same, except for the places where they weren’t. There were probably things in Kell’s head Rhy didn’t know, and there were about to be a _ lot more _ of them. Kell only had one more year before they’d start making him really study at the Sanctuary, learn about being an  _ Antari  _ and all the things that made him different from Rhy. 

Tieren Serense had come - and he liked Tieren Serense normally, but right now he didn’t, because the Aven Essen had said Kell would want to sleep at the Sanctuary, too. That he and Rhy might grow apart, the way Rhy was pretty sure his mother was hoping they would.

_ Well _ , Rhy thought, and felt himself the essence of daring,  _ she’s damn wrong. _

_ “But he lives here, Aven Essen,” Rhy had protested. “He already has a bedroom here! He and I do everything together!” Tieren Serense had seen the look on his face, stormclouds and rage, at dinner and asked to speak to him alone.  _

_ Kell had been quiet all night and had watched them go, looking sad, pushing food around on his plate and pretending to eat while Maxim and Emira chatted about how much he would like it there. _

_ Emira had looked oddly at Rhy the whole time, with that awful glass-about-to-break look she got on her face that Rhy hated most, because it meant that later on he would have to be the grownup who did the comforting and Emira would be the one who had to be comforted.  _

_ “Kell needs some time at the Sanctuary to truly focus on his studies,” Tieren Serense had said kindly, with that sense of calm that floated around him everywhere. Normally that was enough to cool Rhy’s temper, but not today. _

_ “He’s my brother! He should be with me!” _

_ “He is Antari,” Tieren said quietly. “I know this is difficult for you, but he is different, and he needs to be in a place where he can focus on his studies and won’t second-guess himself so much.” _

_ “He’s a prince, what does he have to second-guess about? He can learn just as well here as he can over there! Why can’t you just come here to teach him?” _

_ There was a silence.  _

_ “Rhy, what Kell needs most of all is time to separate himself from you.” _

_ Rhy had stared, blinking wide dark eyes in confusion.  _

_ “Your brother puts great stock in you, and in what you say and think.” The Aven Essen patted him on the back. “You must show him that you believe it is right for him to learn, and that you trust him and believe he can do this himself, on his own. Kell cannot be always in your shadow.” _

But that’s where he wants to be,  _ Rhy thought.  _ Isn’t it?

_ “Kell is going to be very powerful, my prince-” _

_ “He’s already powerful! He already has more magic than anyone else!” _

_ “Yes, this is true. But power without discipline, without balance, is erratic. If he does not learn to balance it, to focus it, Kell could hurt himself with the magic that is in him. That kind of magic, Rhy - the Antari… if they do not use their magic correctly, it can poison the blood. We have no other Antari to help him learn, only the books, and so his way will be harder. He needs the quiet to focus. He needs to be his own person, away from a place full of such expectations for him. He needs to be in a place where he will not push himself near to death because he is trying to be what you want him to be.” _

_ “What if what I want is for him to just stay with me forever?” _

_ “Then… hm.” Tieren had never finished the thought, but had instead started asking Rhy unrelated questions about his own education and riding lessons and after a while he’d been distracted and cheerful again. But that night, in bed, Rhy had thought that what Tieren Serense didn’t say was that if he didn’t want him to learn, Kell wouldn’t. _

_ Kell’s whole life was him, and Rhy had never thought about it - they were brothers, after all, his whole life was Kell just the same - but that night… that night he’d thought, _ if I asked Kell not to learn the blood magic, he wouldn’t. He would try not to, just because I asked him. He might let it poison him even, like Tieren says, just to make me feel better.

_ That was power, to be sure; that was having power over another person in a way that scared Rhy, too young to really face what that might mean. That was a power over Kell he did not want to wield. _

_ That if he asked Kell not to go, he would stay, even if it hurt. _

_ The next day he’d been cheerful and happy about the Sanctuary, and Kell had been thrown off, but he’d relaxed a lot, too, for the first time in weeks. And it wasn’t like Kell was staying all the time over there, he’d come back at least twice a week at the beginning and more later. And it was only for a couple of years. _

_ They didn’t have to stop being who they were to each other, they just needed to learn to be what they were in two different ways. _

For now, though, they could still be the same. Two princes absolutely refusing to do their schoolwork on a perfectly beautiful day. 

“Kell, am I? Am I weird?”

Kell frowned at him. He was in the shade of a big tree, while Rhy sat in the sun. His big brother’s blue-and-black eyes were always focused, always serious, and he was chewing nervously on his bottom lip. “What do you mean, weird?”

“Because I don’t have magic, of course.  _ Everyone  _ has magic. You have tons and tons of it. Mother and Father have _ so much magic!  _ Cook down in the  _ kitchens _ has magic!”

“Rhy, you know magic doesn’t work that way. It just happens or it doesn’t. It’s not weird not to have any and besides, we don’t know that you won’t show some ability later.”

“You sound like Father.”

“Well, he might be right.” Kell shrugged. “He’s right about a lot of things, isn’t he?”

“He’s… he’s wrong about a lot of things, too, though.”

Kell was silent, but then Kell was always quiet. Always had been. When he’d first come to stay with them, Mother had been worried he couldn’t speak at all for the first week, before one day at dinner he had put his hands out and politely asked for more rolls, in perfect Royal, as though he’d known it his whole life.

After that, Rhy had snuck into his room, and they’d played swordfight with Rhy’s toy swords. Rhy had bashed Kell on the forehead accidentally and cried when he bled, but Kell had just laughed and hit him back, and that had been it, they’d been brothers ever since. 

The thing was, Kell didn’t really like to be  _ seen _ . If too many people were looking at him, he retreated, got silent and shy. And in a nation full of people with variations on brown skin and black hair, Kell being pale and red-headed stood out. His blue eye stood out. His black eye made them  _ stare. _

So Rhy had become a distraction, had learned to draw them away from looking at his brother and over to him. He made himself the light and the laughter and the noise in a room. 

He was cheerful, anyway, but the charm his father swore ran in his family made him irresistible when he wanted to be, and when Kell needed someone to look the other way, Rhy was there to smile and laugh and get their attention. That way, Kell was shielded, and everyone was looking at Rhy and not at his brother’s eyes. 

Kell felt better that way, was more relaxed. He would even laugh and talk more, if he knew people were mostly looking at Rhy. He _ hated  _ when everyone looked at him or called him  _ aven  _ or brought attention to what he was.

Kell always wanted to stay off to the side, and let Rhy take the lead. The same way Rhy relied on Kell, his brother relied on him, too.

He didn’t have magic, but he could do this.

“Who do you even know that doesn’t have any  _ but _ me, Kell? Maybe I should go be a sailor. You don’t need magic on a ship, it doesn’t work over the ocean anyway, at least not as much. Isn’t that what they say? That’s why people like me go work on ships a lot.”

“You can’t be a sailor, Rhy, you’re a prince!”

“Why should I even be one, though? You know the other kingdoms talk about me. No magic at all, no power in the blood. I’m prince just because Father is king? That’s the only reason I get to be a prince? In that case,  _ you  _ should be the next king. I don’t know.”

Kell was the only person he could be honest with. Kell was the only person who didn’t expect anything out of him at all but just being who he was. 

“Um. Rhy, you know _ Antari  _ can’t be kings or nobility or hold property. We’re not…”

_ Don’t you dare say it. Don’t you dare say what you’re thinking, Kell Maresh, or I will whack you across the head so hard you see stars into next week. _

“I wouldn’t want to be king, anyway, no one would like me like they like you.” Kell fell silent, swinging his own legs. He’d already started to grow faster than Rhy, and sometimes woke up with pain in his legs and back at night from bones being forced to get stronger and taller faster than they wanted to. Rhy hadn’t hit his growth, yet - he was still short, and looked rounder where Kell had gone all scrawny angles and clumsiness. “I guess I don’t know either. But you’ll be fine, Rhy, having magic doesn’t make anyone a good king or a bad one. It’s just who you are.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you didn’t have more magic than anyone else.”

“I  _ wish _ I didn’t, sometimes, so I could go places,” Kell muttered, but before Rhy could ask him what he meant, he jumped off the bench and turned around, smiling, holding out one hand. “Let’s go play with the fish.”

Rhy jumped up as well, brightening immediately, following his brother across the gardens to the pond at the very back. Kell basically ran, and it was kind of funny to watch these days. His legs had gotten so long, and even when he wasn’t trying to go fast Rhy had to hurry to keep up, but Kell had gone all clumsy too. 

Rhy had watched him trying to get used to a body that kept changing on him every time he blinked, and the fast little clip he’d run at when they were younger was more loping and uneven now. Kell was going to end up really tall, Rhy thought sometimes, and it would be harder for him to hide, then.

It would be harder for Rhy to stand between him and everyone else. 

The pond was only as big as four or five men laid head-to-toe, but it was stocked with colorful fish from another country, brought as part of some diplomatic something-or-other a long time ago. Rhy and Kell stood, looking down into the clear water, as the white-and-orange striped fish with their long tendrils of fins swam back and forth. 

“Do you want me to make them dance?” Kell asked, smiling a little. When Rhy nodded, he held his hands out, and slowly brought up each fish, encased in its own perfect bubble of water, out of the pond. With perfect concentration, he moved the little balls of water like jugglers might, and Rhy was watching the fish, content in their strange moving homes, but also his brother’s face.

The odd little scowl Kell always wore had smoothed away into that small smile, and his shoulders were down where they should be and not up at his chin, and he’d let his hair fall away from his _ Antari _ eye. With his shoulders back and his chin up, standing up straight and not trying to slouch himself into invisibility, Kell looked as noble as Rhy did and more. 

He always looked insecure, uncertain of himself, except when he was doing magic. When he did stuff like this, though, Rhy could see how Kell could be the light in a room, too, if he wanted. If he wasn’t so busy frowning at everyone. He did need to go learn the blood magic, of course, and Rhy had known that even when he’d been angry about it. He needed to go learn, because if regular magic made him so happy, the blood magic would make him even happier.

Rhy reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, and Kell jumped, just a little, but managed to catch the water spheres before they fell. He made them dance, moving them back and forth in a complicated rhythm, and that small smile on his face grew and grew.

Not looking at the fish at all, Rhy said, “You’re pretty weird, too, I think.”

“Maybe,” Kell said, still smiling. He only smiled like this when the two of them were alone. Some days he only really talked when the two of them were alone, if it was a harder day, if he’d stepped on Emira’s toes too many times or made Maxim mad about something. “I’m too much magic and you’re not enough.”

“So we just stick together, then,” Rhy said firmly. “They say magic is all about balance. Right?”

“Right.”

“So if I don’t have any, and you have too much, we just have to stick together, and then we’ll have just enough between us.”

Kell laughed, then, and he laughed so rarely.

Kell let the fish drop back into the pond, carefully, slowly placing them back down. When he let his hands drop, just the barest hint of sweat across his brow, he looked so peaceful and so happy.

Rhy threw his arms around him. At first Kell went stiff and awkward, the way he did when just about anyone touched him, then slowly he relaxed and slid his arms around Rhy, and the two brothers hugged each other so tightly that neither of them could breathe, wheezing laughter as they stuck it out to see who would give up first.

“I’m not going to be gone very long,” Kell said, finally, the first one to give up and twist away, gasping in breath. “Stop acting like I’m moving out of the palace. I’m just going to school, basically. That’s all.”

“But I won’t be there with you,” Rhy said, a little plaintively. “We’re always together. What if…”

“What if what?”

_ What if you stop wanting to spend time with me after you go? What if you don’t want to be around people who don’t have magic any longer? What if you don’t want to be so close to me anymore? What if everyone looks at you and you don’t have anyone to hide behind? _

“Kell. Blood promise me that you won’t ever stop being my brother.”

Kell’s smile dropped off like a rock onto the ground, and he frowned, looking worried. “Rhy…”

Rhy stuck his lip out in the way he knew Kell hated, holding out his hand. “Blood promise. Blood promise that we’ll be weird together forever.”

Kell glanced down at Rhy’s hand, then sighed and slowly took the dagger from his belt, the one he wore all the time, the one he’d brought with him when they found him. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“I don’t care. I want you to blood promise me, because then it means you really mean it, and I do, too.”

He took Rhy’s hand in one of his, gently, his blue and black eyes focused on Rhy’s face as he drew the blade across his palm. Rhy winced and hissed in through his teeth. Kell hesitated and Rhy snapped, “I’m already bleeding, you _ have _ to do it now.”

Kell cut his own hand without even a flinch; Kell had always been good at handling pain, and Tieren Serense said it was because of being  _ Antari,  _ that their nerves were a little deadened to the kind of pain that caused blood, because they’d have to hurt themselves so often to use it. 

Then he took Rhy’s hand in his, pressing their bleeding palms together. There was little  _ jolt _ in his wound, the feeling of magic he couldn’t quite grasp, the same feeling he got sometimes when he could almost,  _ almost  _ get the fire element to react. They stood there looking at each other and after a second of silence, Kell said, “Well? You make the promise first.”

“I promise,” Rhy said with grave dignity and seriousness, “to always, always be your brother first, before I am anything else.”

“Rhy, you’re the crown prince-”

“I’m your brother, first. Blood promise, swear on my soul and may I die if I’m lying, I’m your brother first.”

Kell swallowed, hard, and nodded slowly. “I’m your brother, first, too, before I am anything else. Swear on my soul and may I die if I’m lying.”

“Before I’m a prince.”

“Before I’m _ Antari. _ ”

“Before I am anything, I’m your brother, Kell.”

“Before anything,” Kell whispered, and the smile came back. It was small, and private, and Rhy knew Kell would not have wanted anyone else to see it, but it was there for him - the smile Kell only had for him. 

Emira’s voice called them from somewhere across the garden and their heads snapped in that direction. 

“Oh, Sanct,” Kell said faintly. Rhy was already pretty good at knowing what Kell thought when he did not speak all the words, and he knew he was thinking,  _ she’s going to blame me for this. _

“I’ll go to her,” Rhy said, thinking quickly. He was always the better one at coming up with lies; Kell’s blushing always gave his lies away. “You sneak around behind and get back to our rooms and wrap yourself up. You heal fast, anyway, by dinner it’ll be so closed up they won’t even notice it. I’ll tell Mother you were feeling sick after lunch and decided to go nap in your room.”

Kell nodded, quickly. “Are you sure? I can go with you. You don’t need to be in trouble.”

“Nope,” Rhy grinned, slightly crooked teeth and the curly hair that always fell into his face just adding to the charm. “I’ll take care of Mother. You go take care of your hand. Remember, you blood-promised me, so that means it’s real.”

“I know. Um.” Kell hesitated. Emira called again. “Thank you, Rhy, for being the one to go talk to her.”

“Ugh, don’t thank me, we’re blood brothers now, that’s better than any other kind. We’re weird together, right?” Kell nodded, blue eye shining and even the black eye seemed a little warmer. “Go.”

Kell turned and ran across the garden, heading for the far wall that would let him find the second door into the palace and sneak back to his rooms. 

Rhy turned around, puffed himself up as tall as he could get, and walked back the way they had come, prepared to charm his mother. He was the sincerity and the laughter. He was the one everyone looked at at parties, telling funny stories, looking perfect all the time. He was the one who translated for Kell, ran interference, made sure they left him alone when he didn’t want anyone to look at him.

He could keep Emira and Maxim from looking too close at Kell when days were hard. He could send him to the Sanctuary to learn and still have arms open for him when he came back. He could ignore Emira’s constant little comments about how they were too close. He could be the one who snuck into his room when he had nightmares about a life he didn’t remember. He could be Kell’s laughter for him when he could not laugh for himself. 

He could get him to climb trees and make fish dance and ignore his studies and do all the fun things he wouldn’t do otherwise. Rhy could be his blood-promise brother, better because they’d made a choice and it wasn’t by accident. He could be the one who stood by Kell, no matter what, the one person who would always stand between him and the world.

If Kell needed to be the shadow, Rhy would damn well be the light.


	21. I Don't Need Help (Prompt: Hope)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Hope
> 
> Serial Killers AU, so forewarned - this is dark, although this is probably the chapter where the least amount of awful stuff happens, so... yay? The next few Serial Kill AU stories will all be one interconnected event, so you'll see them for the prompts Hope, Death, Family, and Life.

Lila Bard knew abuse when she saw it, but she’d never in her life seen abuse that looked like a six-foot-tall man with a face full of metal and at least three visible tattoos flinching at the touch of a woman who barely reached his chin.

Barron, who was more or less her father ever since her real dad had run off when she was ten, had been feeling under the weather. Being Barron, he’d of course insisted on opening the bar up tonight anyway, but Lila had managed to talk him into staying home with a beer and the TV and letting her run the bar instead.

It’d felt like the whole universe was conspiring against her, though. First, the sole of her shoe just completely detached when she went to walk out, so of course she had to go back in and change shoes. Then, the Five was a mess, and her motorcycle was probably going to drop something important one of these days if she didn’t drag herself to a mechanic to get it looked at. Then, just to cap things off, Luc turned out to be the short-order cook on duty tonight, and  _ he  _ was an ass about her being late to unlock the door  _ and  _ he was wearing that stupid bandanna tied around his head.

All things considered, Lila had had better days.

The bar at least had the grace not to be totally packed tonight, and the people here mostly wanted plain whiskey and beer. Any customer who ordered ‘pour thing into glass, hand thing in glass over’ was her favorite. Especially when they stilled tipped like it was a mixed drink.

The bar wasn’t exactly packed - it was mostly the usual crowd of guys who’d known her as Barron’s sort-of-daughter, a rough crowd that treated her like she was made of porcelain and called her stupid pet names to make her laugh or get her to threaten to punch them. Then there were some townies, people trying to slum it in a dive bar, touching their glasses with the tips of their fingers like they’d pick up some disease.

I mean, with Luc working the grill, that was entirely possible, but they wouldn’t be getting anything from their  _ glasses. _ Honestly, Lila would have been way more worried about what was in the fried mushrooms, Luc enjoyed making those  _ way  _ more than any normal person should.

Then there were what Barron always charitably called “Luc’s people”, the ones who were usually younger and came and went, buying a certain brand of beer, then meeting Luc at the back door when they finished it. Lila pretended not to see it, pretended she didn’t know that Luc was taking their cash and handing them little envelopes of pills or powder or… whatever else. In return, she got a cut of every sale, and they’d worked out a pretty good system of plausible deniability.

Barron never took his money, but he pretended not to see them, too. Lila had asked him, once, why he let Luc deal out the back door, and Barron had only shrugged and said that Luc didn’t really have anyone, either. He’d told Lila Luc was just alone, and lonely, and this way he had a few more friends than he would have otherwise. All Luc had was an ex he’d never gotten over and a shitty one-bedroom absolutely coated in cat trees he’d built himself for the cranky deaf stray he’d brought home.

There was even one of the newer regulars tonight, a morose redhead she recognized as a rich townie who’d bought from Luc once or twice. He wasn’t even from  _ this town,  _ he was from Ukiah or some shit up the road. He came to moan over some girlfriend - maybe boyfriend? Honestly he was not particularly specific and Lila did  _ not  _ give a shit about his problems - at least not enough to ask. He griped and whined, but he paid for his liquor, and that’s all she cared about in the end.

Plus, he was kind of cute. Or at least better-looking than Barron’s friends, who were all in their fifties and sixties and had been riding motorcycles since hippies were a thing… or so they told her, repeatedly, every chance they got, until she threatened to stop giving them beer if they didn’t shut up.

Between all the regulars, a few people she hadn’t seen before, and the live band, everything seemed perfectly normal… right up until  _ they  _ walked in the door.

It was the dark-haired man she saw first, mostly because he was the kind of asshole who  _ literally  _ wore his sunglasses at night… and also the kind of asshole who wore a tank top in the middle of winter, looking like a T-shirt that was at least a size too small, with the sleeves cut off and the neck lower cut to show off a collarbone piercing he had, with  _ My Favorite Drinking Game Is Drink Until I Like It _ on the front. His black hair looked rough, like he cut it himself, and she wondered if that was some shitty pretentious thing to go along with the piercings all over his face and his stupid shirt.

Lila squinted, trying to count in the dim light. Eyebrow on one side, something that glinted like maybe little silver bits next to his nose up by his eyes just barely visible around his sunglasses, snakebite piercings on his lips, enough earrings that she couldn’t even count them from here, the collarbone piercing, and…

Both her eyebrows nearly raised to the ceiling. 

Lila stuck her head in the swinging door that separated the bar from the kitchen. “Luc, get a look at this total prick who just walked in.”

Luc, who was never not up for an interruption from doing his actual job, stuck his head out and took a look. “Oh, he’s  _ nice looking, _ ” Luc said cheerfully. “God, look that fucking jawline. I’d kill to have a jaw like that. I’d kill to  _ kiss  _ a jaw like that. I don’t get his shirt, who the fuck would ever have to drink to enjoy… Wait. Is he wearing  _ sunglasses?  _ It’s like 9:45 at  _ night. _ ”

“He’s also wearing a fucking  _ tank top  _ in _ January. _ And he’s got a  _ nipple ring -  _ well, that or the right one is just super weird and sticks out.”

“Hey, don’t knock nipple rings, Bard, I’ve got one, too.”

Lila stared. “You have got to be goddamn kidding me.”

Luc laughed and winked at her, the light flashing off the blue stone he wore above his left eyebrow. “What, you shocked and scandalized? You’ve seen worse than that on a Tuesday night when the karaoke machine is on.”

“I’m not  _ shocked,  _ I just didn’t know.”   


“Yeah, well, you haven’t slept with me yet, so it hasn’t come up. My ex  _ loved it,  _ though. You want to hear about that?”

“Jesus God, Luc, absolutely not,  _ no one cares about what you did with Rhy _ .”

"I mean, I care. Do you want to see it?"

"Sleeping with you would be like fucking my brother."

“For starters, I just offered to _ show it to you,  _ you creep. Secondly, you,” Luc declared, “are absolutely no fun.”

“Ha. None at all, and you know it.” Lila glanced back towards the door, where the prick with the piercings had been joined by two platinum blondes, a man and a woman, and Lila felt all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up all at once, felt goosebumps run up her arms. 

They looked almost like identical twins except for the height difference, only they were male and female, and something about them was  _ wrong.  _

She couldn’t define it, she couldn’t have told anyone what the problem was, but the second she saw the two of them, she felt nearly sick. The woman was wearing a loose oversized black T-shirt that looked like it was meant to fit Sunglasses Guy and not her, with  _ Crime Spree Getaway Driver  _ written on it in what looked like white puffy paint and a tight skirt that nearly hit her knees, plus heavy black boots. The man was just wearing a plain black tee and jeans, and neither of them really looked all that unusual, but… Lila couldn’t shake the absolute certainty that she did  _ not _ want to know these people.

Everything in her, all her instincts, screamed at her to get the hell away before they did whatever it was they were here to do.

The black-haired man wearing the weird tank turned and said something to them, and the woman laughed and reached out to run her hand down his bare arm. Even from here Lila could see that she had bright red nails. She watched the black-haired man - tall, pierced, tattooed, and covered in muscles for days -  _ flinch.  _

Then the blond man stepped up on his other side, put an arm around his shoulders, kissed his neck, and said something into his ear.

Sunglasses Guy looked down at the floor, nodded once, and started walking towards the bathroom with the blond man, grinning, right on his heels.

Lila had had a few friends who got knocked around or outright used by their boyfriends. She’d even run off one or two with a knife and some well-placed gasoline and a match. She knew abuse when she saw it.

But she’d never, not once in her life, seen it look like this.

“Hey, Luc, did you see…” She turned around to look over her shoulder, but Luc was back in the kitchen already, and through the crack in the swinging door she could see him dancing around with a fry basket in one hand and his cell phone in the other, taking selfies. “Luc! What are you doing?"

"Rhy wanted to see how I look tonight! He likes the bandana, by the way. You  _ hate  _ the bandana."

"Stop texting your ex! He broke up with you  _ months ago! _ ”

“Nope!” Luc called back cheerfully. “He’s already drunk, he says he regrets it, and I’m going over after work to get  _ laid _ . I think you’ve got a customer, Bard, get on it!”

_ Please don’t be that woman please don’t be that woman please don’t- _

Lila took a deep breath, wondering why they made her so nervous, and turned around.

“I need another drink,” The redheaded townie said, leaning hard against the bar. “Whatever I got before. Can I just get another one?”

“Geez, you’re a sad bastard tonight,” Lila said kindly enough, trying to keep one eye on the woman while talking to him. She’d gone over to an empty table, settled herself into the hard wooden chair like it was some kind of throne. She was pretty, but sort of hard at the same time, like she was a statue. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail but somehow, on her, it seemed regal.

The woman turned to look right at them, and slowly smiled, leaning forward to rest her chin on one hand. Lila swallowed hard, turning back to the redhead, trying to make it look like she’d just been scanning the room casually and not staring. But when her eyes flicked back, she thought the woman wasn’t really looking at  _ them…  _ she was looking at the  _ townie. _

“‘Course I am. My ex called again.”

“I’m sorry,” Lila said, not particularly caring at all. “Must be hard to hear from her… him… that person.”

“Did I tell you what my ex told me last time?”

“Probably. I’ve already forgotten what they-she… he? said.” 

The townie laughed. “Glad to see this bar is so progressive.”

“Barron’s rule.” Lila said, pointing up. There was a sign over her head that said  _ Bigotry is Stupidity and Barron Hates Stupid People.  _ “I made that for Father's Day last year,” Lila said, proud of herself. “I nailed it up there when he wasn’t here one day and he’s never asked me to take it back down.”

“My ex is a she, for the record. Did I tell you about her calling me?”

“Man, I don’t even know your _ name _ , let alone your girl problems. This is honestly the first time I’ve known for sure your problems are about  _ girls _ . What do you want to drink?”

He held out his right hand, and after a second Lila sighed and shook it. He had warm, dry hands and knew how to give a good handshake without feeling like an old fish. Plus, he really was sort of cute. But Lila’d been somebody’s rebound hookup before, and that never ended well, so she sure as hell wasn’t going to let this go anywhere.

“Whatever I had before,” He repeated. “I think I had a flower something… thingie.”

“Elderflower liqueur martini," Lila said, thinking. “That's a girly drink."

"I like girly drinks," he said with a shrug. "Besides, why is it girly?"

"It tastes like  _ flowers. _ It makes you taste like  _ flowers. _ "

"Well, I'm the only one who will even notice tonight - and maybe every night from here on out - so you drink the manly drinks and I'll drink girly drinks and we'll restore the balance to the fucking universe."

"Man, why even drink if you don’t plan to actually  _ taste _ it?”

“Duh.” He grinned at her. “To get drunk.” She found herself smiling back, the woman in the corner briefly forgotten. 

“You’re a weird one, aren’t you?”

“I  _ am _ a weird one. That is precisely why Vanessa is not interested any longer. I’m Kell Maresh.”

“Oh, Maresh logging? My uncle works for them.”

“Right.” Kell rolled his eyes. “Shouldn’t have given you my last name.”

“Eh, I don’t give a shit, if it helps. I haven’t talked to my uncle since my dad disappeared. I’m Lila Bard, and Vanessa sounds like a bitch.”

“She’s not, really. I’m just  _ too much emotional labor _ , apparently.” Kell frowned. “Honestly, she’s probably right. I probably am. I have  _ so many problems.  _ Good to meet you, Lila Bard.”

“We’ve actually met before, but… pleased to meet you for the… ninth time?”

“Something like that. Here.” He put a twenty dollar bill in her hand. “Keep the change.”

“Kell, you just ordered a drink that costs $10.”   


“Yeah, but I’m a little drunk and you’re cute.”

Lila let a beat of silence pass, then said wryly,” Has that routine ever worked?”

He blinked at her. His eyes were blue… like, really blue. “What routine?”

“You’re kidding, right? You see a girl bartender, give her a sob story about your girl that did you wrong, and tip her a bunch and, what, you think I’m gonna give you my number?”

“What?” He laughed, and it was an oddly nice laugh. Lila found herself smiling at him,  _ really smiling,  _ in a way she never smiled at the customers. “No! You barely know me and I am super fucked up about Vanessa right now. I’ll just keep showing up at the bar until I’m not messed up any longer and you know me well enough to like me.”

“Ugh. You’re ridiculous. I’ll make your St. Germain cocktail before you embarrass all of us.” She waved him off, but she hadn’t stopped smiling and neither had he. 

When she was mixing up the drink, she remembered the woman all at once, like a cold thrill down her spine. She glanced over and the two men were back from the bathroom and just sitting down. The black-haired one had some kind of candy in his hands, a peppermint or something, unwrapping it and eating it with an absolutely empty look on his face… not that you could see much from behind the damn sunglasses. The blond man said something to the woman and they laughed again, the man sliding an arm around Sunglasses Guy's shoulders while the woman put a hand high up on his thigh. She watched the dark-haired man go tense until the blond man spoke to him again. Then he suddenly relaxed, leaning his head against the blond, into the crook of his shoulder.

Lila’s skin went cold at the sight. Whatever she was watching, every single instinct was telling her to stay far away from it. To just walk outside right now, get on her motorcycle, and not look back. Let whatever was going to happen, happen and make sure she was far away from it.

Then come back after they were finished and gone, and burn the bar down for the insurance, grab Barron, and just start over with a whole new life in a state these two weren’t in.

_ Not my business. Don't get involved. I’ve never met this guy, his life is not my problem, and besides… he's a big guy, he could just...  _

Lila groaned.  _ Shit. Was I about to say he could "just leave"? Come on, Bard. That's a shit thing to think. You know it doesn't work like that.  _

The woman spoke, patting the black-haired man’s thigh, and he nodded, standing himself up. Lila looked away hurriedly, finishing up Kell’s drink and handing it over to him. He gave her one last brilliant smile and headed back to his table. Lila had a couple of people yell orders for food and beer and put them in, putting the beers up on the counter and calling out the finished food just as the black-haired man stepped up to the bar.

“I, uh… I need to order,” He said, and his voice was surprisingly soft and shy for someone who looked like him. If she’d been shown pictures of the three who had come in tonight, she’d have said  _ he _ was the scary one (in theory - Lila prided herself on feeling no particular fear of anyone, especially not muscle bros with too many rings in their ears), not the mostly normal looking probably-twins, but… no. 

No, up close it was obvious that this guy was utterly harmless, even if he did have what looked like a homemade tattoo on his right bicep and another half-peeking out of his shirt on the other side from the piercing. Lila realized she hadn’t said anything and was still just staring when he cleared his throat and said, a little softer, “Sorry, maybe I wasn’t l-loud enough. For me and my, uh… my f-friends. I need to order for them.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right person. What can I get you?” 

He took his sunglasses off to squint at the drink specials chalkboard Luc liked to write dirty jokes on, and Lila heard herself whistle long and low. He had really nice-looking wide green eyes, but one of them was totally ringed in shades of purple, yellow, and red. She hadn’t noticed when they came in either, he’d been too far away, but he had a split in his lip, too. “Uh. Um. What’s your best v-vodka?”

“I don’t know, Grey Goose? We’re not really a “types of vodka beyond ‘flavored’ and ‘not flavored’ bar, sorry. You get in a fight with the Hulk there, buddy? Who on earth can beat  _ you  _ up?”

“What?” He looked at her, then winced. “She… oh, shit.” He slid the sunglasses back on hurriedly, hands shaking so hard it took him three tries. His breathing had sped up and she could see his chest rising and falling through the shirt as he raked one hand back through his hair. “Oh, shit shit  _ shit _ -”

“Hey… hey, it’s okay.” She went to put out a hand and he flinched away from her, nearly knocking over an empty glass left by an earlier customer. Lila swallowed, trying to look at the table the other two sat at out of the corner of her eye without being obvious. “It’s okay, they’re not even looking, all right? Is that why you’re worried? Because of those people who came in with you?”

He swallowed, and he didn’t nod but he didn’t disagree with her either.  _ He doesn’t want to tell me that it’s them for some reason _ .  _ Why is he so scared of them?  _ “Are they really not looking?” His voice was even softer. “Are you sure?”

“No, I promise you, they’re not looking this way at all. They’re… oh.”

“What?” He put his hands up on the countertop.    


"The woman you were with isn't there any longer.”

“Oh.” The corner of his mouth turned down, the barest hint of a frown. His eyebrows furrowed together. “Th-that’s fine, she’s probably just h-hun… she’s just looking for someone to t-t-talk to.”

“You have one hell of a stutter, man.”

“Do I?” He frowned. “I didn’t u-u-... used to.” Lila glanced at the table in the corner, where the blond man sat tapping his fingers idly to the beat of the music on the speakers and smiling to himself. She scanned the crowd and finally spotted the woman walking along the edge of the wall, and she was looking off in that direction, with an expression of total concentration on her face. Lila couldn’t think of anything all that interesting on that side of the bar, it was just Kell and his damn flower martini, a few of the townies, and some of Barron’s crew. 

“Well, you do now. It’s okay, they didn’t see you take the glasses off.”

Well, now she felt like shit for calling him an asshole earlier. 

_ How was I supposed to know he was trying to hide something and not just being a dick? Really, what were the odds? _

“Hey, so, what’s your name?”

He stared at her, and she could see herself reflected in the mirror of the glasses, two of her, her eyebrows knitted in concern for a complete stranger who could probably have taken out half the people in this bar, and this was  _ not  _ a nice bar. “H-H-H…” He took another deep breath, curling in over himself a little bit. She’d never seen someone who looked so absolutely threatening be completely terrified of his own name. “Haaaah…. My name is… M-my name-”

Lila’s heart was pounding in her chest, and the feeling of  _ something is very very wrong  _ was getting stronger every second. This guy was too fucking scared to say his own name. Those two he’d come in with were probably tough, but he could have fought them both off all on his own. 

Then again, her friends in bad relationships had all been tough as nails, too. That didn’t mean anything.

_ What is wrong with this guy? _

“No worries. Let’s just start over. I’m Lila Bard, and I work here. What’s your order?”

“She, uh, she wants… w-w…” He closed his left hand into a fist where it rested on the countertop. His right hand looked… weird, somehow, like the fingers didn’t work right, like he was trying to close it and couldn’t. “I'm s-sorry, I don't usually talk. This is a… a test.” He was mumbling the words to himself, and she wondered if he even knew he was speaking out loud.

What the hell should she do with what was standing in front of her? She’d never seen anything like this before. 

_ Leave it alone,  _ her instincts screamed.  _ If he’s in a bad place, that’s none of your business. Leave it alone and don’t get involved. Let him walk out of here with them later, like he’s just another customer, and don’t think of him again.  _

At the same time, she couldn’t do that, and she knew it.

“You got this,” She said soothingly, and watched him relax a little. Someone else was signalling her down at the end of the bar, and she put up one finger to show she’d heard them. “Come on. What do they want? Just take a deep breath.”

“She wants so much vodka in a glass that it looks like water.” The man finally said, all at once, as if forcing out the words. “He wants a Guinness.”

“Great, got it. Look, see, no stutter at all. What do  _ you  _ want?”

“M-m-me? They didn't say… I have to d-drive the car later." A strange expression came over his face, one that looked almost like pain. "So they can be in the b-buh… back."

“No problem, DDs drink free. Just tell me what you want. Sprite?” She kept her voice low, soothing, like speaking to a frightened animal. She was sure he could barely hear her over the music, but he didn’t lean any closer. 

“That works. Thank you." 

“Great, I'll get that right up.” Lila squinted a little as she worked, trying to get a look at his eyes through those glasses, but all she got back was her own reflection, doubled, and the sharp line of his jaw, the little bits of metal all over his skin. “Hey… can I ask you something?"

He didn't answer, tensing up again without looking at her.

"Do... you need help?”

“What?” His hands froze on the counter of the bar. Lila heard the person signaling her again and sighed, pushing the drinks to Sunglasses Guy on a small tray.

“Do you need help? You seem pretty freaked out. Do you not  _ want  _ to be with him?"

"Him?"

"Or her, I guess, but I thought... If you don't want to be here… I could help you.”

“No.” His voice was flat, but his left hand was visibly shaking as he slowly took the tray from her, carefully laying it flat on top of his right hand. She saw him wince slightly. “I d-don’t need  _ help _ .”

“Are you sure? You look-"

“You can’t  _ help me.” _ He glanced back over his shoulder. The blond man was watching them now, and Lila Bard watched Sunglasses Guy tighten his jaw. "They always know."

"Know what?" She put a fake, flirty smile on her face, as though she might be hitting on him and he was just trying to politely reject her. Making sure the guy at the corner table would see only what he wanted to see.

"Nothing. Everything. Everything I do, e verything I  _ say _ , if I d-d-don't say it right, e-everything I _think, _they're in my head..." He pushed the bills in his good hand over to her. "S-she said keep the change."

“Hey, if you want I could call somebody, the cops-"

" _ N-no.  _ I told you. They would  _ know. They always know.  _ I d-d-don't want to go." He leaned over the counter a little, his sunglasses sliding down his nose, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the countertop. 

Three short fast taps, three long slow taps, three short again.

"I love him. I'm in love with him," The man said, still tapping. The words came out carefully rehearsed and stammer-free. She could see the green of his eyes again over the tops of his sunglasses, the black eye that seemed pretty fresh. He licked at his lips and she watched the snakebite piercings at each corner shift, a little bit. “Please. You can’t _ help me. _ I want to be with them. I love him. You don't need to _ help me." _

Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

“Woah, okay. Look, I…” The signaling from the other customer again. Lila sighed in frustration. “Wait a second. Let me take care of this guy and I’ll be right back. Anything to eat?”

“Double order of f-f-fried mushrooms, extra suh… sauce.”

Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

“Ugh, your funeral. Luc's gonna be  _ thrilled.  _ Comin’ up.”

She watched him pick up the tray, stepping back a little as he balanced it, and noticed for the first time that his left foot dragged just a little behind the other. 

Lila took the other person’s order, then ducked through the swinging door, feeling a wave of gratitude that they’d asked for something that gave her an excuse to get into the kitchen. “Hey, Luc!”

“Yeah?” Luc looked up from plating a burger and fries, going way overboard on presentation considering this was a shitty dive bar in Bumfuck, Northern California. "Look at the  _ garnish  _ on this one, Bard."

"Luc, none of them give a damn. This isn't exactly a  _ tourist town. _ "

"I am an  _ artiste _ , Lila, baby girl," Luc said with a smile. "You can't rush art."

"Yes you can! Listen, I have a few orders to put in, but first… tapping in a rhythm is Morse code, right?"

"Depends."

"Got a guy out here that did… just listen." She tapped her fingers on the metal prep table. Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Luc frowned. "Yeah, that's Morse for SOS I think. For 'help'."

Lila swallowed. "How do you know that?"

Luc laughed. "Because I've, like,  _ ever  _ watched TV? I think they did SOS on M.A.S.H. or something. Wait, you said a customer was doing that? Asking for help?"

Lila thought of him tapping  _ SOS _ on the bar while saying  _ I love him. _ Of his empty face when he said  _ you can't  _ help me.

_ Shit. _

_ " _ We still got that human trafficking poster in the break room?”

“You mean the shoebox with a toilet I smoke in? That bathroom is like four OSHA violations. Yeah, last I checked it's still there. I hate looking at that poor lady's face when I light up. What’s up?”

“Go take a look at that guy with the stuff on his face again and run everything for a sec? I need to check something.” Ignoring his half-hearted protests, she ducked back into the tiny little closet Barron pretended was a bathroom, frowning and staring at a poster with a frightened woman’s face, stringy hair hanging over her features, duct tape over her mouth. She could hear Luc calling out the finished orders for people to pick up, muffled, through the door.

The woman in the photo had a black eye just like Sunglasses Guy, and the same wild-rabbit look in her eyes that he had. She read the signs off to herself, mumbling the words out loud.  _ Does the person appear anxious, fearful, or depressed?  _ Yes. Check.  _ Does the person have bruises in various stages of healing?  _ Check.  _ Does the person appear to be in the company of someone who is domineering or controls their actions?  _ Double check and mate. Sunglasses Guy didn't fit  _ everything _ on the list, but he fit enough to make her pretty certain of what she was seeing out there.

For one thing, those two men definitely hadn’t gone in the bathroom just for moral support (Barron would have been pissed, but Lila Bard had a standing rule of  _ don't fuck up the bathroom and I don't care what you do in there _ ). Plus, it’d been pretty fucking clear the black-haired man hadn’t actually wanted to go.

There was a number to call, but Lila couldn’t imagine how she would explain it.  _ Yes, hello government people, there is a man here who could kick all of our asses twice over, and he’s scared of a woman who weighs 150 pounds soaking wet and I’m pretty sure he was just forced to suck dick in the bathroom. No, I have no proof of that and he will almost certainly deny it. He's signaling for help, and I believe this based on the Morse code expertise of the drug dealer who works the kitchen. Oh, no, Cocaine Quikstop and his stupid bandana are not here, when I called you he ran off because he is holding like seven different things tonight and not one of them is legal, not even in California. No one else saw anything and none of this will look remotely believable to you, especially because I bet if you ask him, that guy will tell you he’s fine, he doesn’t need anything, and they’ll be watching everything he says the whole time. Can you come arrest me for filing a false report? _

Ugh, Luc would kill her if she got cops or something out here poking into things if it turned out to be for no reason. Plus the band would scatter, and Baron's crew  _ loved  _ the band. And if this  _ wasn't  _ what she thought it was, she could get dinged by the cops for making stupid calls.

But that guy out there looked really wrecked, he was  _ asking for help _ , and she had to do  _ something.  _ Didn’t she? She couldn’t just ignore someone who couldn’t even tell her his  _ name… _

When she came back out, Luc just shrugged and pointed.

Sunglasses Guy put the tray down on the table, his back to them. There was  _ another _ tattoo on his neck. She frowned. “Hey, Luc, look at that weird shit."

Luc, on his way back into the kitchen, turned back, and Lila watched all the chaotic good humor drain from his face. "What the everlasting  _ fuck?" _

On the back of the man’s neck there was some kind of weird stick-and-poke tattoo. It looked like a diamond, right over his spine just below the brush of his black hair. A diamond with long legs that went out to either side, creating a sort of triangle of space in the middle. There was a letter  _ A  _ on each side, nestled in the angle created by the diamond and lines, and a letter  _ D _ in the center.

“That's weird. It looks like he did it himself. What do all those letters mean?"

"He didn't do it." Luc scratched at his neck. "Gonna guess the ones he's with did. Bard, you ever get the feeling you should just run like hell and forget you ever saw something?"

_Yeah, because those are predators, and we're just prey. _As soon as she thought it, she knew it was true. They were _predators._

"What do you think the weird diamond is?”

"Oh, I  _ know _ what it is,” He said, softly. “It’s a, uh, a rune." She looked blankly at him. "Ancient Norse alphabet or some shit. The one he's got represents the concept of ‘possession’. Property. Bet you 50 bucks and a date that those assholes he's with have names that start with 'A' and last name starts with ‘D’."

Lila swallowed hard. “Not taking that bet. That rune means  _ property? _ ”   


“Yeah. As in, that’s what he is. I mean that’s not what the rune actually means, but… that’s what we’re looking at, Bard.”

“How the fuck do you know about  _ runes? _ You… you think it's just a bondage thing?"

“I’ll have you know I spent a very formative summer telling peoples’ fortunes with a set of runes back when I lived up in Portland. Runes don’t really work the way I pretended they did, but rich assholes don’t care. I made more money doing that than I would have working at Target, anyway.” At the look on her face, he shrugged. "I wasn't  _ born  _ a bar cook, Bard."

“You are one weird fucking bastard, Emery, you know that?”

“That’s what everyone _ says _ , but you like hearing my stories just the same. And to answer your question before, no. That's not bondage. Bondage is normal. Bondage is people having fun.  _ That  _ is… whatever it is, that bastard is definitely not having fun. Look."

Lila watched the man set the drinks down in front of the blond man, who grinned and patted the seat next to him. Sunglasses Guy sat down, and the blond pulled him in for a kiss. Lila felt that creeping  _ run run away run right now  _ feeling up her spine as she watched Sunglasses Guy try at first to push him away. The other man grabbed him by his chin and said something to him, and he just… nodded, like he had at the beginning, and gave in. 

Lila frowned, not even trying not to stare. This time, if you hadn’t been watching before, you might think Sunglasses Guy was actually super into it.

Christ, what a kiss.

Luc frowned. "Damn, you bastard, let the poor guy come up for  _ air. _ "

_ Get the fuck out of here and never look back, these people are dangerous, Lila, they are not people who should be here, you should not be anywhere near them. Go before they look at you. You do not want them to see you the way they see him. This isn’t your business. This isn’t your problem. _

Nobody was looking at them except Lila and Luc. Nobody noticed.

_ God damn it, Bard, are you about to  _ make _ this your problem? _

They finally broke apart and Lila saw Sunglasses Guy's left hand go back into a fist under the table as the blond checked his phone and smiled at what he saw there.

"Fuck me six ways to Sunday," Luc breathed out. "I've never seen traffickers before. Is that what we’re looking at, Bard?”

Lila took in a deep breath. “That guy is  _ definitely _ being  _ fucked up, _ I don’t know if that counts as trafficking, but… what do we do? Can you really call the cops on ‘giant dude in a bad relationship’?”

“No, don’t call the cops,” Luc said, and Lila made a face. “Not because of  _ me,  _ because they’d never believe he couldn’t just-”

“Just leave,” Lila finished, thinking of her own first reaction. “Right. And if they see the cops, they'll disappear with him and that's it. So… what do we do? And where the hell did the woman go?" She looked around, and then felt the blood slowly drain from her face.

The woman was sitting at the same table as the redheaded townie from earlier, Kell, and had one hand laid over his, resting her chin on her other hand as she laughed at something he said. 

Kell was smiling back.

_ Yes, I  _ am _ about to make this my problem. _


	22. Worth It (Prompt: Summer)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the Dark! AU, where Astrid wins, she forces Rhy to marry her, and she is pregnant. Chapters 10 and 17 contain the other prompts that take place in this AU.

“Do I get to go in the water?” Luc asked, keeping his voice low and respectful. He heard Kell snort from somewhere behind his left shoulder and pointedly ignored it.

The queen did not look at him as she moved towards the water. She was draped in swaths of white linen, walking carefully with her great round stomach ahead of her, one hand resting on it as if to calm the twins growing inside. Beside her, Rhy held her other hand, ever the courteous husband and father-to-be, wearing his own light linen swimming clothes, made to match by the tailors who worked, nervously, to meet her expectations.

They made an odd pair, Astrid a decade older and so pale she seemed ghostly, covered in faded black veins, her long white-blonde hair pinned in an elaborate series of braids around the gold circlet she wore when her crown was not appropriate for the occasion, her smiles cruel and never quite reaching her eyes. Next to her, Rhy’s bright and shining smile for his subjects, the curly dark hair that nearly entirely covered the small gold circlet he wore, his dark skin and warmly drawn features made it seem like the two of them should never have existed in the same world.

Of course, Luc thought, they shouldn’t have. 

Astrid stepped, a little hesitantly, into the water, the warm red lapping at her ankles. “You may not,” She said flatly, still never looking at Luc. The combination of the summer heat, the twins, and her odd vicious little  _ Antari  _ lover, the one that had  _ stolen his fucking ship,  _ being gone had made her sharper even than normal, more prone to lashing out simply to entertain herself.

He knew not to ask again. Instead, he shrugged, decided to make the best of things, and simply sat down on the riverbank to enjoy the view as she and Rhy both waded further in. Rhy glanced over his shoulder, giving Luc a small, private smile. Luc grinned back at him, happy just to see him, to be here out of the sun.

He saw Rhy’s eyes flick to the side, to where Kell stood, and the smile fade from his face before he turned back to help the queen move in up to her waist, the white linen floating around her. Luc could already see some of Rhy’s dark skin where the white cloth had soaked up water and pressed against him, transparent. 

Luc found himself sort of looking forward to what would be visible when they came back out of the water.

Last night, Rhy had been dismissed from his shared chambers with Astrid and had instead spent the night in Luc’s room. They’d shared a bottle of wine and a whole lot more besides. Rhy had come in shy and left the next day in a dressing gown with a smile and several very interesting new bruises on skin Luc was fairly sure no one but he and Astrid would see. The first time he’d gotten to be with Rhy since they’d let him out - he hadn’t wanted to waste a second.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting the sun warm his face. Beautiful, wonderful sunshine. It had been more than a year since he’d been out in it like this. The only way it could have felt better was if literally everything about why he was here was different.

Luc was out of the prisons, at least, and that was something to give thanks for, but he could have done without the silver bracelet soldered into an unbroken circle on his left wrist and the two guards assigned entirely to him, members of the Mindless who only stared and stared and stared.

He could have done without the runic letters carved into the bracelet, too, a curse written in words like sticks that stuck against his skin, binding him to her, to Rhy, to wherever they went. Athos Dane, the Queen's twin brother, had crossed through the doors and made the curse himself.

He was, Astrid had assured Luc the day she came to see him in the prisons and offer him a choice, the only person Astrid could trust.

_ "I prefer to work on clean skin," Athos had said to him, gripping his forearm near the elbow so hard he'd ground his teeth together not to show the pain. He had a translation rune drawn on him, and Luc heard both the Maktahn he actually spoke in and Royal that he could understand simultaneously. "But your wrists have been scarred already, and by someone who did not understand how to do it well. You should have been worked on by a master. You could have been someone’s work of art.” _

_ "I think, master or no, they still made their point well enough," he'd said dryly. _

_ Athos had leaned over, close to him, and let his thumb press just a little, gently, into the vein just inside Luc’s elbow. "I could have made that point better, and in ways that hurt you much more internally. Ways that would leave you unable to think of anything but me ever again. I could have left you begging for me to touch you in ways that at least did not give more pain." _

_ Athos Dane had eyes just like his sister's; an impossible bright ice blue with tiny black pupils, focused and manic at once. You couldn't break yourself away from eyes like that.  _

_ Luc had stared right into them, fixed a rakish 'not intimidated by you' smile on his face, and replied, “Then I suppose I should thank my lucky stars that it was your sister I led a revolt against and not you. At least I nearly got my head cut off by a beautiful woman and not…" _

_ "Not what?" Athos's voice dropped to a growl. _

_ "... a very handsome man who has steady hands that are significantly larger than other men's?" _

_ Athos had stared at him with that same serious intensity for one more second, then burst into ringing, sincere laughter that was somehow even worse. Then he looked down to Luc’s wrist. "Good choice of words.” _

_ Luc pitched his voice low and seductive. “How good do my words have to be for you to let go of my arm?” _

_ Athos’s smile widened, his teeth wolflike. “Better than that. My sister says you swore fealty to her, and that her husband loves you. Rhy has given her what she wanted, so she gives back." Athos Dane's thumb rubbed back and forth on the skin just beneath the crease of his elbow, thoughtfully. "He has been a good slave." _

_ "A good slave, maybe. A better husband. And an excellent king." _

_ "Hm. My sister speaks highly of how he rules at her command. She knows how to be merciful. You still live because her husband loves you. You walk because you knelt at her feet. She can be merciful, where I cannot. So here, Alucard Emery, is her mercy." _

Athos had soldered it on, with fire and flame that burned into Luc's wrist and made him grit his teeth and finally cry out, guards pushing down on his shoulders so he couldn't get away - but he didn't want to. He was trying hard not to fight the pain, even when Athos cut into burned-over scarred-up skin to force it to bleed against the silver bracelet, the bracelet that soaked up all his blood to fill in the runes, making them a deep-red matte garnet. He’d let it wash over him in waves until he felt the spell click into place, wrapping his arms and his legs, a certainty of  _ you will never leave  _ that rung through the back of his mind in words that sounded like tears, and a wall too tall to climb between himself and the ocean… but also sounded like Rhy whispering into his ear in bed,  _ I love you, stay with me. _

It was worth it. 

Astrid had come to Luc's cell herself, the cloth of her loose woven dress belted over her rounded stomach and with a scandalously low neckline trimmed in gold embroidery in the shape of wolves with bared fangs, and offered him the terms: he could leave his cell, as a personal gift from her to Rhy as a thank you for the twins already large and kicking hard inside her, if he did three things:

He must let her brother put something on him to ensure he could never run away or act against her. He must swear his loyalty and fealty to her crown. He must agree to live the rest of his life as a kept man with his own room but no freedom, slave to her and consort to the king, only able to leave the hallway he would live in if it was by her command.

He hadn't hesitated. Before she had even finished listing the terms he had been going to his knees before her. It wouldn't have mattered what she said, he would have sworn to it, any of it, all of it. Rhy was worth every moment and every potential humiliation there was. He'd kissed Maxim's ring on Astrid's finger through the bars and swore that he would never waver in his loyalty to her so long as Rhy served her.

_ And the second he doesn't, I'll bury a dagger in your throat myself. _

“I can’t believe you’re enjoying this,” Kell said from his left. The Kell he had seen when they brought him up from the prisons was different, to be sure; poisoned by his anger, eating himself alive with it. He and Rhy had the same obedience curse carved into their faces, but Rhy wore his as a badge of honor, a representation of the choice he had made. He had taken a curse and turned it into a legend, the king who sacrificed even his freedom to stand up for his people.

Kell, on the other hand, wore his as a hateful brand and a collar. 

“Well, I can’t believe you’re still trying to talk to me about it,” Luc said, not opening his eyes. "It's a beautiful day, puppy. Stop brooding for five minutes and enjoy it. Have your friend come out from under that tree while you're at it."

Kell snorted. "He doesn’t like Arnesian summers, the sun burns his skin. Also, Holland isn't my friend."

"What is he, then? How do you know so much about him if he’s not a friend? Is he your lover? That where you get your comfort on cold nights? He  _ is  _ all kinds of muscle, isn’t he? I can see the appeal."

Even with his eyes closed, he could just about  _ see  _ the color Kell's face turned, and it was almost certainly a very satisfying tomato red. "Go fuck a tree, Emery."

"Go apologize to your brother, Maresh."

Kell was silent, then.

Rhy had come to see him in the prisons (and his room, now that he had one) multiple times in fury and despair over Kell. The two brothers had not spoken since the day Astrid had told them she was expecting, beyond occasional shouting matches and drunken insult-hurling. Most of those had taken place in Rhy’s bedroom, where Astrid would sit on her chaise lounge, hand on her stomach, and smile half-lidded like a woman enjoying herself in bed. 

Rhy refused to let Kell call his children-to-be monsters because of their parentage and the details of how they came to be, and Kell refused to give up and pretend all of this was normal and accept Astrid’s children as Rhy’s. They both needed something different to stay sane in a world Astrid ruled, and neither would budge an inch.

Technically speaking, Luc agreed with Kell. Emotionally speaking, Kell was hurting Rhy and Luc knew whose side he would stand on. "I know you don't want to," He said quietly. "But being his brother should be more important than being right."

“She’s a fucking demon, and he treats her like-”

“His queen? Like the woman who told him to marry her and be her husband or thousands would die? Like a woman who could have any one of us killed if he steps out if line? Like she will be queen for the rest of his life and he has done nothing to deserve you insisting on heaping misery on him?"

Kell was silent, but the rage came off of him in palpable waves. The sun was warm on Luc’s face and he found himself smiling, just a little bit, undoing the buttons on his shirt and sliding it off. He’d gone pale, over the year in the prisons, pale and thin. The sun felt so good, even with no ocean breeze to cool its heat, and the Mindless made sure the people crowded to watch the foreign queen bathe in the Isle wouldn’t come anywhere near them.

From offshore, he heard Astrid ask Rhy, “Why is it no one swims in this river? It’s so warm, and I can  _ feel  _ the magic in it. I feel better than I've felt in months. The twins are kicking."

A pause, and in his perfectly polite voice, Rhy replied, “It’s sacred. It would defile it to swim here. What we’re doing is… illegal.”

Astrid laughed, and Luc felt the sick twist in his stomach that was rapidly becoming familiar. He hated her, and he hated her laugh, and he hated everything about this, but Rhy wanted those children and Rhy wanted  _ him _ , so here he was. To the bitter end, with his king.

And he was going to be everything he could be for those babies, once they were here. That was the hurdle Kell could not seem to leap - they were Astrid's children but they were Rhy's, too. 

Astrid's voice was smugly self-satisfied. “All the better for us to swim here, then. When you are royalty, Rhy, nothing should be illegal if you wish it. Should we defile this sacred river even further? Should we show the people on shore how a queen may love her husband?"

“... Astrid, please, no.” Rhy's voice was softer, hesitant. Because, of course, if that was what she ordered, it was what Rhy would do. Saying ‘no’ was never a statement, with Astrid Dane, but always a request, a plea.

_ I fucking hate you, you monster, for what you’ve done to him. For the mask he wears. But he has to wear it, and I love him, so I will give him someone who remembers what he looked like without it. _

“Only joking, silly boy.” But there was something in her voice that said maybe she wasn’t. "Do you want to feel them kick?"

In a heartbeat, in the space of a few words, she could simply have Rhy forget his nervousness and fear of her and instead give him what he wanted. Just like that, Rhy was wrapped up in her again.

There was a pause, and then Rhy laughed, and Luc loved the sound of him laughing, delighted and surprised. "I felt that one! They’re going to be so strong, Astrid… Wait, was that next one  _ both  _ of them?"

Luc heard Kell drop to the ground right next to him, and opened one eye. Kell had been forced out here by Astrid’s command, and he sat in a light red linen shirt and pants with his knees up near his chin, arms around them, watching Rhy and Astrid in the river. There were deep shadows under Kell’s eyes, making even the blue seem faded against the white around it, and Rhy had said he never slept now. He just paced, endlessly, or went down to the training room under the palace and fought shadowy magical opponents until they found him lying in the training ring hours later, too exhausted to move.

He was awake night and day, and it showed.

Rhy had said that he had the other  _ Antari _ , Holland, occasionally giving him something to make him sleep - and that only when Holland told him to sleep did he give up and do as he was told.

_ What's going on there? What is between those two now? And why don't I know the answer to that question? _

"I just feel like the only person who still has a brain. You're all acting like this isn't hell, like she  _ didn't  _ kill them in front of us, like…"

Luc sighed. “I tried to save your brother, Kell, and I failed. Those people who tried to rebel with me are all dead. _ All of them _ are dead. My surviving crew has been press-ganged into working for  _ Delilah Bard  _ and her many, many knives. A year ago, I was in chains facing a death sentence until Rhy intervened, and I have had  _ nightmares  _ about what he might have had to do to convince her to let me live. This is preferable to death and prison."

"Why? Why is pretending this is marriage and not captivity better than acknowledging it for what it really is?"

Luc took in a deep breath, slowly exhaling. He could hear Rhy and Astrid moving around in the water, speaking in low voices. Astrid was kinder to Rhy, since the pregnancy. She was  _ only  _ kinder to  _ him _ , but at least it was a start. "We need to follow Rhy's lead on this. Rhy knows what he needs to keep going. I know that you have it hard, too-”

“Yeah, the rest of you aren’t taking weekly reports to  _ Athos _ ,” Kell said with a dark look on his face.

“... right. But Rhy is king, and he needs us to support him, and to support those babies once they're here. He can't carry it all himself forever."

"What do you mean, carry it all himself? She makes  _ me  _ announce her every night, it was  _ me  _ she sent Lila to lie to in the first place, it was  _ me _ that fucked up-"

His voice shook, and Luc blinked at him, really looking for the first time. What he’d seen as fury and anger… was that actually  _ guilt? _

"Kell, what _ is  _ this?"

"Augh. Nothing. Just tired." He put his hands up over his face and Luc watched him, thinking. "I just think a lot about how it's my fault this happened to him, and now he thinks he has to pretend to want  _ her children _ because of-"

"Let me stop you there. He  _ does  _ want those children."

"How?" Kell whispered the question, and his shoulders shook a little. There was a sound from behind them and Luc looked over his shoulder, where Holland stood carefully covered by the shade of a tree twenty feet or so back, watching them with intense focus in a face somehow devoid of any particular expression.

_ Seriously. What the hell is this? _

"Because they're  _ his children,  _ dumbass."

“They’re hers.”

“No. They’re his. They belong to both of them, and Rhy has wanted to have kids since he was little himself. Kell…” Luc glanced around, but no one was paying them any particular attention. He sighed, then reached out and put a hand on Kell’s shoulder. “If you tell anyone I touched you and it wasn’t me punching you, I really will actually punch you.”

Kell laughed, just a little, from behind his hands. 

“Look. I know this is awful, I do. I know. And please believe me when I say that Rhy knows, but we are trapped. We lost, yeah? We lost and we can’t come back from that. Rhy can live with having lost. He can live with being in her bed when she wants and being with me when she doesn’t. He can live with having children with her, and living a whole life with her, all of it he can live with because he’s a king and kings don’t always get to choose much about the lives they live… but he _ can’t  _ live without you.”

“He’s doing just fine these last few months,” Kell muttered.

“No, he’s not. He’s pretending he is in front of you, but he’s not. It tears him apart to fight with you, to be not talking. There isn’t anyone alive who can be for him what you are. Just go say you’re sorry to him sometime, Kell. He’s your _ brother. _ ”

“He’s married to a monster.”

“And that wasn’t his idea, and you shouldn’t hurt your brother because he lost a war he never wanted to fight. A war _ you’re _ responsible for.”

There. He’d said it. Now to see how Kell reacted.

Kell’s hands slowly dropped and he turned to look at Luc, wide-eyed and a little white-faced. “What did you just say?”

“Look, I know you feel guilty, and you should have, at first. You’re the one who smuggled, you’re the one who started talking to Delilah, you’re the one who slept with her, you’re the one who believed the whole ruse about Holland wanting to escape them… so you’re the one who let Holland and Delilah get away with all of it. You're the one who didn't think Holland would chain you up. I get it. You’ve got a lot to feel guilty about.”

“Thanks, this talk is really encouraging and comforting,” Kell groaned, dropping his head into his arms where they rested on his knees, so all Luc could see was his red hair. Holland, up in the shade of the tree, moved as if to head their way, then apparently thought better of it and stayed where he was.

“But.” Luc paused. “You did everything you could to stop it, too. Guilt won't do anything but ruin you. You're a wreck, Maresh, and while a few years ago I might have enjoyed it, I… and trust I do not admit this happily… I am  _ worried _ about you."

Kell didn’t say anything, didn’t even move. Out in the water, Astrid and Rhy were talking, and Luc watched her lift one black-veined hand to touch Rhy’s face, pulling him in to kiss her. Rhy still had one hand on her stomach, and the two of them were soaked up to their shoulders in the Isle’s red water. Queen and King, the picture of royal love. Luc felt a spike of jealousy, but it was a small and foggy thing - for one thing, he could see even as they kissed that Rhy’s eyes were open, and on him.

Luc smiled, just a little, and had the feeling Rhy would have liked to smile back.

“When she came through, you tried. You very nearly killed Delilah - and if Holland hadn’t been behind you, you would have. Kell, you can’t let guilt poison you and Rhy. You need each other to survive this, and as much as I think you’re a smarmy, arrogant little pissant who needs to learn to keep his nose out of his brother’s romantic life…” He squeezed Kell’s shoulder a little. “You have to forgive yourself for losing. You have to forgive Rhy for choosing not to ruin himself with unhappiness when he can’t see any way out. You’ll have to learn to forgive Rhy’s children, because not one of them is going to have had a choice in who their parents were, and Rhy will adore them.”

Kell mumbled something without raising his head.

Luc sighed. “This is the longest I’ve ever gone without insulting you and I’m not sure I have the willpower to resist it in the future, so please listen to me. All you see now is her, but you need to try and see Rhy, too, or you might lose him. A man given a choice like the one you are attempting to force on him, a man asked to choose between his brother's prejudice and innocent children… he will not make the choice you want."

There was another silence. "I hate you, Emery."

"Because I'm right?"

"A lot of reasons."

"But one of them is that I'm right?"

"You'll have to get the queen to command me before I'll ever say  _ that  _ out loud." Kell pushed himself to his feet all at once. “Your Majesty?” He called, his voice even and calm for once. 

Astrid did not answer him, not exactly, but she turned her head a little in his direction, where she and Rhy were holding each other in the water. 

“I would like to return to the palace now, if you permit it, for training." Kell said. Luc looked at those deep, dark shadows under Kell’s eyes and thought,  _ for the saints’ sakes, you little arse, don’t train - sleep. _

Astrid just waved with one hand and Kell waited, closing his eyes, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” He said in a louder voice. “You have to-... you ordered me out here, you have to… let me go back. You have to say it.”

“Ask nicely,” Astrid called over her shoulder.

Kell ground his teeth together so hard Luc could  _ hear _ it and then said quietly, “Please let me go back to the palace, your Majesty.”

“Good enough. You both may go.”

“Thank you. Rhy, um... I want to talk to you alone later. Tonight.” Kell turned and left, ignoring the curious stares of the crowd and the Mindless that fell in line behind him, following him back, as though the mark on his face would ever have let him take a step out of line. 

After a pause, Holland left, too, trailing Kell by a good twenty feet, wincing at the weight and heat of the sun on his pale skin.

_ Seriously,  _ Luc thought, squinting,  _ what the fuck are they to each other? _

Luc heard Rhy ask, his tone slightly baffled and thrilled, “He  _ wants _ to talk to me…? He wants to  _ talk  _ to me? Luc! Did you do this?"

"A gentleman never tells," Luc called back and laid back down on the riverbank, closing his eyes. He smiled, letting the sun shine on his face. He’d done his good deed for today, and it was time to try and get the color back in his skin. He was outside. He was out of the prisons, and out here in the sun he could hear Rhy’s voice all he wanted again.

Maybe, just maybe, he could fix the problem with Kell, too, and make Rhy’s life that little bit better.

All he had to do was try not to think about the silver on his wrist, and the way he would never see the ocean again.


	23. Only For a Second (Prompt: Death)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Death
> 
> The second of five of the Serial Killer Gap Year finale. Tomorrow we'll do the third, for the prompt Games, then in a few more days Family, and finally Life. 
> 
> TW: Drugging, assault, and I'm gonna go ahead and warn you it's gonna get real dark in the next chapter

Oh, man, he felt so  _ good.  _ He’d never gotten this drunk off just two drinks before, but following Astrid out of the bar, Kell felt so fucking  _ good.  _ Maybe Lila had just given him stronger drinks, it did seem like he and the bartender were starting to be friends.

He felt like he was floating somewhere above himself, but in a good way. He was kind of dizzy and kept finding his feet stumbling, nearly tripping, but the woman holding his arm didn’t seem to mind. She leaned into him as much as he did her, and Kell could tell her skin felt weirdly cold compared to his, but that was okay, that was fine. She kept looking at him, and he wanted her to keep looking at him all night, forever maybe.

Kell snort-laughed into his hand. He was  _ so drunk. _

Astrid must be pretty drunk, too, she’d been laughing since he agreed to go home with her, or at least to a motel room. He wasn’t exactly sure how they’d get there - they were both too drunk to drive and the closest motel was at least two miles down a road with no sidewalks - but that was a problem to worry about later. She’d said she needed to stop by her car first, to get a card to pay with, so they were walking down the side of the road in the middle of the night towards that big dirt lot near the Wendy's, just the two of them, and it felt so  _ good. _

_ Take that, Vanessa,  _ he thought, and had to hold back a giggle.  _ Take that, Lila Bard, pretty bartender, for thinking she wasn’t really into me.  _

“How far is your car?” He asked out loud, and was surprised by how slurred his words were. He couldn’t seem to quite control his mouth. He was  _ so drunk.  _ “Man, what was  _ in  _ those drinks?” He mumbled.

“Ketamine,” Astrid replied airily. 

Kell frowned, trying to figure out what she’d said. “What?”

“I said you must have had something pretty strong,” She said, and smiled at him, those ice blue eyes cold above the warmth of her expression, and something rang in the back of his mind, some sense that something was wrong.

He'd seen eyes like that before, somewhere, hadn't he? 

For a second, he remembered the cute bartender, Lila Something, who had come over to his table with stormclouds and anger in her face and told him he needed to be careful. 

Astrid - the woman holding his arm was named Astrid, he shouldn’t forget that, maybe she’d give him her number for next time she was in the area… why did her eyes stay so cold? Astrid had looked up with wide, innocent blue eyes and asked Lila what she was talking about.

_ “I trust him,” Astrid had said, her hand over his, smiling just a little up at the bartender, who scowled back. “We’ve just been talking, and he doesn’t seem like the type to do anything I wouldn’t like. Don’t you think so? He just seems so harmless.” _

_ “It’s not him I’m worried about,” Lila snapped. “You’re with the two in the corner, right?” _

_ Astrid had tilted her head, a bit of hair that had come loose from her ponytail sliding across her forehead like silk. Kell wanted to push it behind her ear. One of her fingers moved, slowly sliding back and forth across the back of Kell’s hand, in a way that lit up every nerve ending. He swallowed. “My brother and his boyfriend? Sure, yeah. We’re on a road trip, kind of celebrating them being together for three years, although technically that won't be until April. We’ve got a whole surprise with a present planned, although we’ve got months to find the present. Thing is, you know, it’s kind of hard being the third wheel with them being all lovey-dovey tonight. You know what I mean?” _ _   
_

_ She looked back at Kell, and winked. He was grinning, he knew he was, a dopey grin that she should have been annoyed by but somehow this whole time they’d been talking, she seemed charmed by him.  _

_ “I think you should go back and sit with them and leave Kell alone,” Lila said, quietly. Her voice was hard as steel, and Kell blinked up at her, confused at how different she seemed than the cheerful woman who’d taken his order every single time he’d come here before. “Or at least go tell your brother to keep his hands to himself in public. This is a bar, not a whorehouse. Plus, your drink’s up, you want all that ice cold vodka to get warm?” _

_ Astrid leaned over, just a little, looking up at Lila for a second with an expression that had gone oddly cold and calculating, the way a wolf might look at an injured fawn still kicking. Lila took a step back and away from her, and Kell felt some dim sense of unease. For just a second, looking at her face, he thought Astrid looked barely human. _

_ Then, just as quickly as the expression had appeared on her face, it was gone. “I like it both ways,” She said in a soft, throaty voice. “Cold and warm. Don’t you?” She let her finger run across the back of Kell’s hand again. “Do you have a problem with my brother’s relationship?” _

_ “No, I-” Lila frowned, looking between the two of them. “I mean, yes-” _

_ “But the sign above the bar,” Astrid said sweetly, “suggested otherwise. It’s the first thing we noticed when we came in, that we’d be safe here. You know, it took his boyfriend  _ years  _ to really come to terms with who he is, we’ve been working with him for so long… it was so nice to see a safe place. Were we wrong?” _

_ “It’s not  _ that,  _ I just…” _

_ “Lila,” Kell said, turning around to look up at her, “What’s the problem? We’re just talking.” _

_ “I just don’t trust her-” _

_ “We’re just  _ talking _ , Lila,” Astrid said warmly. “And I’m right here, you shouldn’t talk about me like I’m not here.” _

_ "Why," Lila Bard said, clearly pissed, "are you talking to  _ him?"

_ “I just wanted to get away from my brother for a second, you know how it is. You can’t imagine the tedium of watching them be sweet to each other for eight hours a day while we’re driving, listening to that nonsense.” She glanced over at the corner and Kell followed her eyes, to see a man that looked just like her, only taller and broader, whispering in the ear of a dark-haired man wearing sunglasses. _

_ Kell blinked. Something about the man caught his attention and held it - something striking about the black hair and pale skin and muscles, about the way he held himself. He looked… familiar, like Kell had seen his face somewhere before.  _

_ Maybe on TV? _

_ He could have sworn the dark-haired man was looking right at them. Kell tried on a small smile, and the man smiled back, just a little bit, before he seemed to catch himself and looked down at the table again. _

_ The brother noticed Kell looking, and gave him a cheery wave. Then he said something to the dark-haired man again, who shook his head quickly, staring down at his hands. _

_ “That’s your brother’s boyfriend?” He asked, softly. "He's good looking. I like his piercings, they look… really cool. I’ve always wanted one on the collarbone like that." _

_ “Have you?” Astrid’s voice was bright with delighted surprise. She looked at him a little more intently. “You think he’s good-looking? Do you want to meet him, Kell? He’d be happy to tell you about it, you know, walk you through what it feels like. He's got so much experience with the process now." _

_ “I mean, maybe later, but… I thought you and I were talking…” _

_ “Sure, sure,” Astrid said, leaning in close to him, a little of her arm brushing his. “Later, we’ll make sure you two get to know each other better. Maybe tomorrow morning we can get breakfast somewhere. You’ll like him, he’s really funny when he wants to be.” _

_ “Hey, I was talking to you,” Lila snapped. Her voice was hard, angry. “Is boyfriend what he would call himself? Huh? Is he here because he wants to be?” _

_ Astrid sat slowly back, and the coldness was on her face again. "I can't imagine what you mean by that."  _

_ "He looks scared, that's what I mean." _

_ "Oh, that." Astrid's face went gentle. The worry in her expression seemed so sincere. "He has anxiety and struggles with social situations. When we met him, he was just trapped in that house. He's been in therapy ever since he and my brother got serious, you know. He finds crowds frightening. Tonight was supposed to be a test of how much he's recovered. His therapist recommended it." _

_ "But… wait. A test?" _

_ "Yes. You know, he can barely speak to anyone but us. Every time he tries-" _

_ "He stutters?" _

_ "Exactly. He can never make himself understood. This whole road trip has been about introducing him to new people and new experiences with us right by his side to keep him safe and secure." Astrid's voice was rhythmic, almost hypnotic, and Kell found himself sort of carried along by it. Even some of the hostility in Lila's face began to fade, replaced by confusion and fog. “Poor Holl," Astrid continued, putting a hand up to her heart. "He tries so hard. You know, my brother had to take him into the bathroom earlier when he had a panic attack." _

_ "He had a… is… that what it was?" _

_ "Well, what did  _ you _ think he took him in there for?" _

_ "I… didn't know." Lila put a hand up over her face, scowling.  _

_ "Why have you taken such an interest in my brother’s love life, anyway?" Astrid’s voice had dropped, just a little. Kell saw, for just a moment, the odd look of focus on her face again. "I saw you talking to him at the bar earlier. Did he say something to pique your interest? Did he say he doesn't want to be here with us? We should definitely take him home right away if he did, of course he's trying to be strong but his anxiety is  _ so bad  _ in public places…" _

_ “No,” Lila said, a little too quickly. “Don't make him leave. He didn’t say anything like that." _

_ "Did he  _ say _ he doesn't like my brother? Is that why you’re asking? Did he tell you that he isn't his boyfriend?" _

_ "... No." _

_ "What  _ did  _ he say?" _

_ "That he… wants to be here." _

_ There was a small, satisfied smile lifting the corner of Astrid’s mouth. "Then I don't see what your problem is." _

_ “The tattoo on his neck-” _

_ “He was drunk,” Astrid said casually, without batting an eyelash. “He thought it sounded funny at the time.” _

_ “But... I think he was trying to tell me-” _

_ “Trying to tell you what?” _

_ Lila Bard froze. “I don’t know.” _

_ “No,” Astrid said quietly. “You don’t. We’ll take care of him, don’t worry. My brother loves him very much.” _

_ “Lila,” Kell said, more firmly this time. “It’s okay. Look, we won't leave the bar or anything, if that helps. Can you just let me talk to her for a while? If I need you I'll come get you." _

_ “Yes,” Astrid said quietly. “Can’t you just let us talk?” _

_ “Don’t take your eyes off your drink,” Lila said in a flat, hostile voice, but she looked shaken, uncertain. “And don't let her take you anywhere." _

_ "What?" Kell blinked. "Why?" _

_ "Never go to the secondary location, Kell. Okay?" _

_ "I appreciate your assumption of my strength," Astrid said, sounding amused. "But I doubt I could do much of anything to someone a foot taller than me." _

_ "I wouldn't put it past you to try. You take him one step out of this bar, I call the cops." _

_ "How rude, considering you have never met me and last I checked, two grown adults are allowed to be near each other." _

_ “Lila,” Kell snapped, finally annoyed that she hadn’t taken the hint. “Just let me talk to someone, okay?” _

_ The two women briefly stared at each other. Then, Lila sighed. "I’ll be keeping an eye out for you. I'm watching you, and your brother, too.” She walked away, back to the bar where the cook stood blatantly staring with a weird expression on his face, and began speaking urgently to him, gesturing back towards the table. Kell wondered, vaguely, what they thought was going to happen.  _

_ But he did put his hand around his drink, and held it a little tighter.  _

_ He'd kept his eyes on it the whole time, except for when her brother came over to talk to them, but even then he'd only looked away for a second. _

“... wait.” Kell said, disengaging himself from Astrid, coming to a stumbling stop. His head spun when he wasn’t moving, and he was fighting a sense of strange calm that seemed to blanket everything, pushing down a hint of nervousness that had started to try and make its way through. It was like he was outside of himself looking in, and he wasn’t the one in control. His arms and legs felt weirdly weak. When he spoke it was with difficulty. “Wait. I should go back. Lila was worried, I told her I wouldn't leave the bar.”

Astrid looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “Are you dating her?”

“Well, no-”

"Then why worry? Is she your friend?"

Kell tried to think, but thought felt like punching at smoke and he couldn't quite grasp it. Astrid was making a lot of sense. "No… I just come to this bar sometimes."

"Do you live around here?" She tilted her head, and a bit of light from a streetlamp nearby lit her skin like an angelic glow.

"No… I'm an hour north."

"Good." She smiled again, and her teeth were so white and looked almost sharp. Kell blinked a few times, trying to fight the dizzy fuzz that had overtaken him. "Is she going to come looking for you?"

A car passed them, and Kell was briefly fascinated by the way the headlights looked cutting through the winter fog that hung close to the ground, muffled every sound. You could barely see five hundred feet ahead, in fog like this. It was one thing he loved about living here - the tule fog blanketed everything and it was all so quiet.

For a second he saw some great white monster moving in the fog, turning its wide blue eyes on him. Then it was gone.

He sort of wanted to sit down now, but he wasn’t entirely sure that if he could, he would be able to stand back up. "I… no, she won't. She doesn't even know my number."

“I didn’t think so." Her smile deepened, and some dimly flashing bit of logic tried to break through the weird way his body and mind felt wrapped in wool to tell him something was wrong about her face, but he couldn't pinpoint what. "You struck me as a man out on his own. All by himself. Who would come for you, I wonder?" She pulled her hair tie out and shook out her curtain of white blonde hair, tilting her head at him, a smile playing across her lips. 

Her face had changed. All the softness had dropped out of it, gone hard and cold as the blue of her eyes. She was smiling, still, but it was a very different expression. She stepped closer for a second, almost dancing in her boots, and took his face in his hands, leaning in to kiss him.

Her lips were cold, and soft, and he nearly fell against her even though he was at least six inches taller. She held onto him, hands sliding down from his face to circle his neck, and her tongue felt so  _ good. _ His head was spinning with her scent and her taste and the feel of her body pressed against his.

He didn't even feel  _ drunk.  _ He felt  _ high. _

"You taste like flowers," She said softly when she broke away. "You taste like flowers and you thought he was handsome and you liked his collarbone… You're so  _ perfect _ . I was just going to get rid of you later, but-" ** **   
** **

"You were what?"

"Nothing. I just meant I don't usually let men stay for breakfast, but  _ you…  _ D'you want to have some  _ fun?  _ Got an itch you need scratched tonight?" She slid one hand down over his chest, his stomach, gradually resting her palm over the fly of his jeans, pressing until he let out an involuntary gasp. "I know  _ I've _ got an itch. Let’s get you on your back, flower boy."

"... wait. Something's wrong." His voice was breathless and she pulled away from him, dancing back on her feet, pulling him along with by one hand. He went helplessly, feeling oddly powerless to think or make a decision on his own.

She pulled the shirt off over her head and tossed it at him. He barely caught it, and when he looked back up, she was standing in front of him in a black lace bra and her black skirt with something, some shadowed narrow thing pointing out along one thigh and all thoughts beyond that flew out of his head entirely. 

He put her shirt up to his face, and it smelled like her but like something else, too, like a forest in winter, a little bit of pine and cedar, like… “This is a man’s shirt,” He said, his tongue feeling like wood trying to say the words.

“You’re right,” She said, putting her hands on her hips. Her skin was pale, paler at night, nearly as pale as her hair, and he wanted to follow her wherever she went to see if she would take any more clothes off if he did, but also he was becoming terrified of the awful chill of her eyes.. “It’s Holland’s, but I told him to give it to me tonight.”

“Who’s Holland?” Shit, a boyfriend? She had a boyfriend? Well, if he didn't  _ meet _ the guy, it didn't  _ really _ matter...

“Oh, right. My brother’s boyfriend is named Holland. Don't worry, you'll  _ definitely  _ meet him later. I liked the bit on the front so I wore it tonight. Athos makes all of Holland's shirts now, like a hobby, and this is one of my favorites."

"Oh. I like the way he smells."

“Do you like boys, Kell?” She crooked her finger at him and he stumbled after her, feeling dizzy and euphoric and fogged-over.

“Sometimes.”

“Good,” She said, quietly. “That’s good, Kell. I have two boys you’re going to fucking  _ love. _ Or love fucking, anyway. Eventually."

"I'll what?"

"Oh, nothing."

He felt so weird. He felt so separated from himself, and he wanted to touch her just to try and bring himself back to earth, but something was wrong… 

How had he gotten so drunk? It had only been two drinks - and he'd never looked away from it, right? Just for a second when her brother came over…

_ "Astrid, you never came for your drink." The hand that dropped onto his shoulder was cold right through his shirt.  _

_ Kell had turned to look up at Astrid's brother, who was putting a glass full of a clear liquid down on the table. He'd winked at Kell, a big grin on his face, showing a flash of a metal tooth on one side. In that moment, Kell thought, he had only been looking at him. "Nice to meet you. Any friend of Astrid's…" _

_ "Oh, we're very friendly," Astrid said from behind him. “This is Kell. Kell, this is Athos.” He turned back to look at her and she was smiling, chin resting on one hand. _

_ Kell's hand had never left his glass. _

_ But his eyes had. _

"Wait." He stopped again, but they were already at the dirt lot. "Astrid. Wait."

She reached over, grabbing him by the hand, pulling him forward. "For what, silly?" She was smiling, her hair falling all around her. Kell's heart had begun to pound, beating too hard, and the strange helpless calm wrapped him up too tightly.

"I only had two drunk - two drinks."

"Right." She kept pulling him through the lot, towards an enormous full-size van at the back corner, one of those vans with the stripes on the side. It had paper dealer plates taped on the back window. “That’s true.”

“I’m too drink for two drunks.”

“Right. That’s true, too.” She opened the back door to the van, and Kell stared blankly at the inside. There was one row of back seats, but where the third row would normally go, there was nothing. An enormous open space, with metal bars riveted into the tops and the places where the side doors would be, if they hadn’t been welded shut. “Get in.”

“Shit,” He said out loud, but the word only barely came out. “I don’t want to.”

Astrid laughed, and it was a brittle thing, as she shoved him. He fell forward, slamming into the back of the van, and he’d been right - once he went down, he couldn’t seem to push himself back up. He tried to roll over onto his back to kick her, but his legs weren’t really doing what he told them to and instead he just ended up making it easier for her to grab his feet and force him inside. 

Jesus Christ, she was so fucking  _ strong. _

“You know what I like about ketamine?” She said brightly, climbing in after him, closing the doors behind her. It was dark, suddenly, dark except for the barest hint of light from a streetlight that lit her skin and bounced off the silvered metal bars along the inside. “It takes a while to really sink in. First you just get chatty and touchy, then you get real drunk and happy, and finally… you get…  _ pliable. _ I don’t have to worry about the bodies getting blackout too soon, I get to take my fucking time. Especially if I nail the dosage. Even if you survived the night you'd remember less than half of this tomorrow."

Kell laid on his back, the world spinning horribly, unable to get his limbs to move. He stared up into the ceiling of the van, trying to think.

Was this a date rape drug? He’d never actually thought that much about those before. Was he about to be date raped?

Wait. Had she just said  _ the bodies? _

“I know it’s not sporting,” She continued, a little apologetically, rummaging around in a bag off to the side. “Once upon a time I let the bodies fight back a little, but you know, too big a chance of leaving DNA behind at the scene, and you’re too close to home for that. Plus Holland gets all worked up when they’re still crying and begging and shit. Poor thing. I'm starting to think Athos and I will just have to care for him forever.” She lifted something in her hands, something he couldn’t quite see. 

Crouched in the van, her skirt bunched up her leg, and he realized the odd shadow he’d seen before was a knife strapped to a leather garter belt around her thigh. 

_ Am I going to die? _

She pulled the knife out, holding it in her hand, lifting the blade until it pointed right at his face. “Holland’s trying  _ so hard now, _ ” She said, cooing the words, but the softness of her voice clashed with the brilliant madness in her eyes. “He really is. He’s  _ so _ good. I’ve never seen Athos so happy. He fucks like a banshee when he's trying to forget he ever did anything else. How about you? How do you fuck when you're scared?"

Kell wanted to panic, but at the same time he couldn’t. He could feel the panic, he could feel it banging against a door somewhere deep inside his brain, but even though his heart was pounding, he felt a million miles away. He felt himself starting to breathe too fast, shallow gasps that made the dizziness worse, tears running down the sides of his face to pool into the shell of his ears. He couldn’t even move his head to shake them away.

“Don’t worry,” She said, soothingly. “I’m not going through with the original plan. I think you’ll be just perfect, flower boy. Just perfect.”

_ This is how I die - drugged up in a murder van. _

“F-fo… for what?” He managed to ask through the fog.

She turned around to look at him, leaning over and taking his arm in one hand. She slowly dragged the knife up the length of it, and Kell hissed, but it didn’t really hurt, not like it should. A bright red line of blood welled up along the cut and she laughed, leaning down to lick at it with a tongue that was too red, too bright, too much. “Ssshhh. You’re going to look so good broken.” She pulled a tiny phone out of her pocket, one of those burners you could pick up at Walmart, and dialed a number.

“Hey,” She said cheerfully into the phone. “Are you dancing with him?... well, finish out the song, then. Did the bitch notice yet?... oh great, I love when convenient barfights break out during hunting night…. Ha, yeah, that was funny, I miss Texas. Grab him and head out here, but make him close his eyes before he gets to the car… you’ll  _ see _ why. Just do it. I found the perfect anniversary gift for him… no, I know, but I guarantee mine is better… Yes, of  _ course _ we'll give him yours, too!... Just come see.”

He laid there, helpless. He could feel himself bleeding, faintly, but couldn’t do anything about it. 

“Love you,” She said softly, sweetly, into the phone. Then she set it down and turned back to look at him, and her face was two monstrous cold blue eyes blazing out of some kind of clay-made mannequin, the skin running and reforming, and Kell closed his eyes desperately against it.

When he opened them again, her face was normal.

_ This is how I’m going to die,  _ he thought, and he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. It seemed sort of funny, really, because Lila had warned him to watch his drink and he’d been a dumbass who didn’t listen and he was about to go to a  _ secondary location,  _ assuming he wasn’t dead before he ever got there, and he choked back an odd, bitter chuckle at the thought that he was going to get murdered just for being a  _ dumbass. _

“Let’s get you ready,” She said thoughtfully, looking him over. She pulled out another bag and opened it up, holding something up into the light. When he realized what it was, his eyes went wide, and she laughed at the expression on his face. “Oh, you like those? The handcuffs were giving Holland awful scars. We had to upgrade. You should have seen his face at Christmas. Really, I know deep down he likes it, even if he won’t admit it. I think he's finally starting to appreciate all of the care and effort my brother puts into their relationship. Hold still. If you’re a good boy, maybe you’ll get more ketamine.”

“D-don’t want-”

“Sssshhhhhh,” She said again, pressing a finger to his lips. “Just close your eyes.”

Time sort of blurred and ran like ink in the rain, and he went with it, letting himself drift. She moved him until he was sitting with his back against the back of the one backseat row, did something with his wrists that pushed them up above his head, but he could barely feel them any longer and he didn’t know what, exactly, only that they didn’t really move anymore when she was done, but it didn’t hurt, either. He’d seen them but he couldn’t exactly remember, only that they were green and felt soft, leather maybe, a mix of something soft against his skin and something metal, closed around his wrists. He moved his wrists back and forth, eyes closed, basking in the weird feeling and the rattling of something that sounded almost like music.

Every time he opened his eyes, he saw her, leaning over him, checking, tightening things until they pinched, at one point holding a water bottle to his mouth and pinching his nose until he drank. After that, she tied something over his mouth and things spun even harder.

Then he heard footsteps approaching, and he tried to call for help, but it was dark and his eyes were closed and nothing came out, just a muffled groan.

Through the closed van door, he heard a male voice. “Just a little further. No, I’m keeping my hands over your eyes, you peeked before.” 

There was another male voice that answered him, lower pitched, with a hint of an affectionate dry humor in it. "Athos, you let me  _ trip  _ before."

"The one time! Trust me this time, I'm being careful."

"Sure you are. What is it Astrid wants to show me?"

"Just wait for it, Holl-Doll."

Kell couldn’t focus well enough, the words wound around the sounds they made and all of it was colors and ketamine and it felt wonderful except for being terrible and he was probably going to die tonight.

Astrid was sitting next to him, and she moved across the back of the van, crouched down, opened up the doors. Kell squinted, trying to see, and something rattled when he tried to pull his wrists down and couldn’t. The rattle sounded like cymbals and he did it again just to hear the noise, its color was red red red.

The blond man from before had his hands over the eyes of the dark-haired man, who wasn’t wearing his sunglasses any longer. “Oh, Astrid,” The blond man - Athos, Kell thought in a daze, his name was Athos, right? - said, in awe, looking at Kell and swallowing hard. “You’re right. This is the perfect gift.”

Kell tried to remember how to make noises but he’d forgotten, all he could do was stare and blink and feel the terror trying to crack through the drugs.  _ Oh. This is how they feel, before they show up on the news and they don't feel anything anymore. _

_ I'm gonna be on the news. Too bad I won't get to enjoy it.  _ He wanted to laugh but it wasn't working. Laughter was gray, it was an action he wasn't allowed in the video game, everything was colors and blue and oh, he was with a monster now.

“I know it’s a few months early, but…” Astrid grinned. “Okay. Take your hands off. Open up your eyes, Holland!”

The blond man pulled his hands away all at once, with a flourish, and Kell, his eyes barely open, watched the dark-haired man’s face go from expressionless to wrenched with horror. The whites of his eyes seemed  _ so _ white and sounded like bells.

_ I am so goddamn high right now. _

He slowly put one hand up over his mouth. “Athos, what the fuck? Wh-why is he still alive?!”

"It's for you." Athos slid an arm over his shoulders, gesturing into the van, at Kell, who whispered, “help me." 

Only there was something  _ in _ his mouth, a cloth that pushed down on his tongue tied so tightly around his head that it hurt, and what actually came out was a muffled ‘helff eeeee."

Astrid grabbed Kell by his hair and yanked his head back, so he was looking the man right in his green eyes. The green seemed to leak out of them, drip down his face and spread all around, a whole world of stained-glass green. Kell wanted to laugh at how pretty the world would be before they murdered him. 

How fascinating the face of the man who was staring at him - all blacks and greens and shiny metal bits. He looked like he might throw up, and that would be colors, too. He tried to tell him, to tell him he was pretty and green, but his mouth wasn't working.

_ I’m going to die, and everything is so beautiful. _

Athos leaned over and spoke right into the dark-haired man’s ear.

“Happy anniversary, Holland.” **   
**


	24. Holland Cracks (Prompt: Games)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3rd of the 5 final Serial Killer chapters - this is the darkest one, and you have been warned. If you have squicks/triggers around assault, horror, blood, sexual assault, or anything of that nature, this one may be hard for you. We'll have two more, for the prompts Family and Life. 
> 
> Uh, Content warning: you're going to think Holland is about to do something really terrible, but bear with the paragraphs.
> 
> Tomorrow we'll have cyberpunk, and then the modern! AU, then dark! AU (but a fluffy one), so you'll get some palate cleansers. Uhm… I promise the next one is about flowers?

“Happy…” The word stuck in Holland's throat.

The redhead was staring at him, glassy-eyed, high as a kite, his head hanging limp to one side. It was the same one Astrid had been talking to back in the bar, the one he’d kind of smiled at - the body he’d thought Astrid would be getting rid of by now. 

Holland felt sick. “Happy _ anniversary _?” 

“Look what I got you,” Astrid said, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the van like a child, hooking the knife back into her garter belt as it became clear that it was, at least for the moment, totally unnecessary.

He swallowed, hard, against the sudden pounding of his heart. This wasn’t what he had expected, when Athos put his hands over his eyes. There was a way they did their presents, things they got him, and it was too early for the yearly one, it should just be monthly presents, just new piercings or books or or or… instead they’d brought him a body that didn’t know it was dead yet.

“It’s a man,” Astrid said helpfully.

“I know,” He replied, ragged. “I see it’s a man. I s-s-see… y-you got me a m-man?”

**"**Its name is Kell," Astrid said softly. "Say hello to Holland, Kell." 

Kell, gagged and with his hands cuffed to a bar above his head, just blinked. Astrid's fingers still gripped his hair and she shook his head hard. 

"I _ said _, say hello, flower boy."

Holland closed his eyes against the memory of the first night, lying on his stomach on the living room floor staring at Ros's body lying next to him, Ros’s eyes still wide open with the last bit of fear he’d felt. Astrid and Athos had been in ski masks, Athos sitting hard on his lower back right at his hips, one hand jamming his head into the floor to keep him still, Astrid duct-taping his hands together above his head. _ Say hello, puppy. You're about to have a very bad night, but first, say hello. _

"Heh-oh," Kell said, then let out a weird high-pitched giggle from behind the gag. "I'm ah-out oo eye."

_ I'm about to die. _

"We know, flower boy," Astrid said softly. "And you're going to do it _ so well. _"

There was blood on one of the redhead’s arms, a long, thin, trailing cut that Holland knew had to be Astrid’s doing. 

“Do you like it? Do you like your anniversary gift?" She asked, head tilted. Her lips were red, too red, smeared with blood. There was a right way and a wrong way to answer Astrid’s questions, and he couldn’t give her the answer she wanted.

He put his hands up over his face, trying to think, hearing his own breathing start to speed up, heart pounding inside his chest. They’d never made him handle a live body before. They’d always left him in the car, to read or curl up in a ball or ignore what happened as hard as he could until it was over. “Astrid, I…”

“Well?” Her voice dropped, went a little lower, and he flinched. Wrong way. That had been the wrong way. After three years, he didn’t need her to start hurting him to know. “I went to so much effort for you. Don’t you _ like it?” _

Athos’s hand tightened on his shoulder, and the heavy weight of it felt like it would press him into the earth. He was afraid, but the fear was being buried by the way he always felt, resigned and numb and nothing left but them. There was _ nothing left but them. _“Yes,” he said in a breath of air. “Yes, I do, of course I do, Astrid. But…”

“But?” Astrid tilted her head. “Look at me. Put your hands down.”

He dropped his hands immediately, looking up from under his eyelashes at her, hunching his shoulders. “I c-can’t… I can’t kill anyone, Astrid, I can’t. You’ve never made me-... you always said I wouldn’t have to-”

“Shush, pet,” Astrid said, her tone back to warmth and soothing. She moved across the floor of the van, reaching up and putting a cool hand against his face, and Holland felt himself relax, just a little. “It’s okay. You’ve been a good boy, haven’t you?”

He hated himself. He hated them. He hated everything. He loved them when they weren’t angry with him. He hated himself. “Yes,” He whispered. “I-I’m trying-”

“You try so hard for us now.” She stroked his hair, gently, gently, and Athos’s arm was still around him, and they weren’t going to hurt him… at least not yet. He took a deep breath, trying to relax his shaking hands. “You don’t have to kill him. I made you a promise, you’re right. I’ve told you over and over you’d never have to free a body, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” Holland repeatedly hoarsely.

“Do you love me, Holl-Doll?”

Athos, kissing against his neck, murmured, “_ Do _ you love us?”

Holland tilted his head to the side, making it easier for Athos, shivering a little at his touch, hoping Athos didn’t realize it was out of disgust. “Y-y-yes. I love you.”

“Both of us?” Astrid smiled, a viper’s grin, shark’s teeth, wolf’s eyes. She was a monster and he had never, ever been able to escape. He would never get away from them.

“Both of you.” There was a right way and a wrong way to answer, and it didn’t matter if it was true, they wanted him to say it. _ First one and then the other and then both together and then one and then the other over and over and over and over and over and over- _

“Good boy.” Athos gently pushed him forward and he climbed into the back of the van obediently, having to take Astrid’s hand to steady himself, he was shaking too hard and nearly fell over. Her hand felt like ice, but then, it always did unless she was in bed with someone.

Him. It was always him now, him or the bodies that weren’t yet dead.

Athos went in after him and closed the doors, and it was dark, and he could hear everyone breathing - most of all Kell, whose breaths were loud and panting. He’d looked kind of nice, in the bar, and Holland had made a mistake. He should never have smiled at him. He should never have noticed the body existed, shouldn’t have noticed it was a person, a guy, someone real, a_ person- _

“I’ll keep my promise. I won’t make you kill it. But, Holl… I want to play a game.”

“A… a game?”

Athos nuzzled in against the side of his face and Holland closed his eyes, trying to keep himself together, trying to think. In the back of the van, three of them and Kell, they were nearly pushed against each other just sitting here, and the way they smelled was overwhelming him.

The sight of Kell’s wrists in the green leather Athos had bought him for Christmas last year was awful, made him think of the way they’d laughed when he just stared into the box, the last time he’d cried. It was the last time he’d been able to cry.

Three years in, thinking was hard and only getting harder, and he wasn’t sure how much of the version of him they’d seen in a bar in Maryland was even left. He swung wildly between his old loathing, wanting to escape, and a kind of desperate dependency that was more terrifying than any of the things they’d actually _ done to him _because that part didn’t want to leave, didn’t know how.

He _ couldn’t _ try to leave, anyway. They always knew. They seemed to know when he was _ thinking _ about it, and each punishment had been worse than the one before it. He’d settled himself in to living with them until they were done, until his bad luck ran out, until he pissed them off too much and the thin self-control they only barely maintained when it came to him finally broke. He’d started to daydream about how it would end, because by God, at least it would fucking _ end. _

“A game,” Astrid said firmly. “The game is called ‘fuck him.’”

“What?” Holland’s heart dropped, left hand clenching into a fist, his right fingers twitching as they tried but couldn’t easily do more than half-close to the second knuckle. “N-no! I d-don’t… _ you _do… Astrid, I couldn’t…”

Astrid’s fingers ran back and forth over the knife at her garter belt, thoughtfully. “What if I cut off a finger, would that help to convince you? His if you fuck him, yours if you don’t?”

“You should do what she says, Holl,” Athos said softly into his ear, and he closed his eyes against the voice and the warmth of his breath. “You always do what she says in the end, it’s just a matter of how you get there.”

“Peeef dun,” the redhead managed to get out from around the gag. His forehead was shiny with sweat, his face pale with bright red stripes of color high in his cheekbones. His blue eyes were locked on Holland, but went in and out of focus, in and out. “Peeef dun fu ee. Oooo pehtee...” His head fell back, limply, bumping into the back of the seat he had been settled against. “Ooooh ick oo ah ahm-ah…”

_ Oh, sick to my stomach. _

_ Ha, _ Holland thought grimly. _ You and me both. _

“Athos, I _ can’t. _I’m not… I’m not a…”

“A what?” Astrid’s voice was low again. “What are we that you are not, Holland?”

_ I’m not a monster. I didn’t want to be a monster. I just wanted to go home from the bar and watch a movie. I just wanted to get high with Ros. I just wanted to live my life. I just wanted to survive. I just did what I had to do. I’m not a monster, I just wanted to live through this… _

“I’m not a_ rapist _,” He snapped, finally, and watched her eyes widen at the tone. He flinched against the expression, waiting for the punishment, but all was silent in the car for a long time. When he opened his eyes to look back up at her, she was smiling.

The smile was worse than the anger.

“Is that what we are?” Athos asked, his hand running down Holland’s back and back up again, resting over the tattoo. That’d been a punishment, too, after he’d tried one more time a year or so ago to get away. That had been the last time he’d tried to do anything at all. “Is that how you see our relationship, Holland? Is that true? That would hurt me _ very much _ if it was true.”

_ Of course it's true, you're a fucking rapist. That’s all this has ever been, I never wanted you, you’re insane, I wish you were dead, you’ve ruined my fucking life- _

“N-no! That’s not… I j-just mean, with him, it’d be… Astrid, he’s barely conscious.”

“Hm. This game is interesting,” She said, scooting until her back was against the side of the van. There was so little room with all of them in here, and he was overwhelmed by them, by their presence, by the way they loomed over every single thing he thought, felt, smelled, saw.

“I have an idea for the game,” Athos said thoughtfully. He shoved Holland forward onto his hands and knees, which put his hands on either side of Kell's legs, their faces only a few inches apart.

Kell was crying, even though he wasn’t making any sounds. There were tears running down his face. Holland stared at him. “It’s okay,” He heard himself saying, softly, and his voice did not shake, he did not stammer. He sounded even, and calm, and emotionless. “It’s going to be okay. Do you hear me? Can you hear me? You're going to be okay, Kell, all right?"

_ Because you'll be dead soon enough. _

Kell nodded, slowly, his breathing beginning to calm.

“Good. Just keep your eyes on me. It’s going to be okay. Just some bad luck, but you’ll be okay.”

Astrid wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Don’t talk to it like it’s a person, Holl.”

“He _ is _ a person,” Holland said, softly. “You’re a _ person, _Kell. I’m sorry. Just hold on.” Kell nodded again, but he couldn’t tell if he could even hear him at this point, or if it was just nodding to nod. 

_ Just bad luck. I’m sorry. Your bad luck runs out tonight, and mine goes on and on and on. _

“So you_ don’t _ want to fuck him…” Athos leaned over him, his chest against Holland’s back, the cold solidity of him through Holland’s T-shirt, kissing at the back of his neck. “What if we let him live if you do?”

“What…?” Holland stared into Kell's blue eyes. He tried not to care about the bodies, and mostly he didn’t, but something about this one…

“Ooooh, raising the stakes, I like it,” Astrid said, smiling. She pulled her knife again and moved, holding it up against Kell’s throat, ready to slice. Holland tried to jerk back but Athos pushed him forward, so their necks were nearly the same distance from the knife and Kell's face filled his whole field of vision. She could kill either of them with one move, both with two.

“If you fuck him,” Athos said softly, “We’ll let him live. Dump him out in the woods, maybe a little worse for wear but still breathing, and let someone find him and save him. That’s all you have to do, Holland.”

“That’s it,” Astrid said, and her eyes were brilliant and sparkling and he loved her and hated her and they were his entire life, a life they’d ruined and rebuilt on them alone. “That’s all you have to do. Is that so hard?”

“Is it?” Athos asked into his ear. “Is it so hard, Holland? You could save a life tonight.”

“First one we’ve let you save.”

“First one. You’ve gotten pretty good at this, right? What’s the difference in doing it with him and not us, other than _ you _get to be in control? You do what you’re told, he gets to go home and live to be victimized another day. What do you think?” Athos’s tongue licked at the silver earring, the first one they’d ever given him, and Holland struggled not to audibly retch.

“Just do it, Holl,” Astrid whispered. With both of them talking, he just couldn’t _ think. _ They were everything. They were the voices inside his head, the only things he ever heard. They were the only people who ever touched him, they were Astrid with her hands around his neck, her hair a curtain brushing his skin, saying _ I wish I could love you like Athos does, I don’t care about you at all _ in his ear, they were Athos pushing his head down into the bed while saying _ I love you so much and I'll never let you go, _ over and over, they were always too close and too _ much _ and Holland couldn’t remember if love had ever been anything but this.

“Prove that you love us,” Athos said from behind him.

“Prove it,” Astrid said from in front. 

“Mmmmf,” said the redhead with the warm blue eyes, rattling the chain above his head. 

“It’s all you have to do and he can go home. He gets to live. He won’t be a body after all, you can save him, and all you have to do is-”

“_ Stop!” _He groaned, closing his eyes, his temples and heart pounding in time with each other. “Please stop. Please. I…”

If he tried, at least, maybe they’d let Kell go home. Maybe someone would get to live. Maybe someone’s luck would change. Maybe maybe maybe but they had lied to him about things before. Astrid might decide ‘home’ meant heaven, not surviving. 

He took a deep breath, tried to picture doing to the man in front of him what they had done to him. He tried to think about how it had worked, the way Athos had sounded and felt the first few times, the way he had gone away in his head and come back after when he could but then Athos didn’t like that and started forcing him to stay in his head, to feel good, to-

“I can't do this.”

“Yes you can,” Athos whispered, sliding his hands around over Holland’s stomach. “Yes you can. I have faith in you. You're so good."

“We believe in you,” Astrid said softly. “We believe you have it in you to do this. We think you’re so strong, Holl-Doll. Do this for us and save his life.”

“Save a _ life, _baby.”

“Be the hero, Holland.”

“Do it.”

"Do what we say."

Holland leaned forward, slowly, and Astrid pulled the knife back from Kell’s throat as he did. He whispered into his ear, “I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He put a hand up to his face, where he could feel the damp tear tracks and sweat there, bits of red hair sticking to his forehead. If he could do this, maybe he could save someone. He let his hand slide around, undoing the knot that tied the gag without even looking. He had enough experience at it by now.

When the gag came off, Kell coughed a little, swallowing hard, but he didn’t look away. “Please,” He whispered. “Please.”

Holland’s heart hammered in his chest. _ Please, _he had begged them over and over again, and they had never listened to him, not even once.

"Isn't he pretty enough for you?” Astrid smiled, petting at Kell’s hair a little.

"If he's not, we can get another." Athos’s voice behind him, in his ear.

"Come on, Holl, don't you want to save him?"

"Do you _ want _him to die?"

“You have a split in your lip,” Kell slurred. “Did you get hit in your lip? Your eye is so pretty. Everything is green and purple and blue and red and bruises are a singing…”

“See, he thinks your eye is pretty, I bet he doesn't even mind."

"None of them _ really _mind, they just pretend, like you. You used to pretend."

"He said he thought you were good looking, before, does that help?"

“I did.” Kell nodded, sagely. “I did say that. You have colors I like your colors..”

"See, he thinks you're hot, Holland, doesn't that make it easier?"

"It won't take long, don’t you think? He won't remember it anyway."

"Come on, baby. We’re offering you a choice.”

"Come _ on, _Holland. Don’t you want to get to choose something, just once? Just this one time? You could make him tell you anything. Do you want to tell him your name? You can tell him your name, if you want.”

Holland, breathing hard, gently touched Kell’s mouth with his fingertips, feeling the give of his lower lip. His stomach lurched, nausea fighting fear. "M-my name is H… Haaah… Holland Vosijk. I'm so sorry," He said to those blue eyes, welled up with tears and fogged over, glassy with the drug she'd spiked his drink with.

Holland had watched her do it; he’d been watching as Athos went over, got Kell’s attention for just a second, and Astrid had dropped the little sphere like a bit of candy into Kell’s martini the second he looked away, where it had dissolved almost immediately.

He’d watched it happen, and done nothing. He always did nothing. He never had a choice. This was at least a choice.

“Kell Maresh,” Kell said, his head tilting to the side. “Had another name when I was born. Holland is a name like porcelain.” Kell laughed, off-key and thick, his head starting to fall back against the seat until Astrid pushed it forward again, until his forehead was touching Holland’s. “Holland cracks.” He laughed again. “Holland _ cracks. _”

“That’s right.” Holland tried to smile at him, the expression creaky and unfamiliar to him, and thought of the way he’d seen, over his shoulder, the bartender notice them leaving before. He was sure he’d seen her say something to the cook and move back into the kitchen. “Holland cracks. I’m sorry,” He said again, not sure what else there ever could be to say beyond apology after apology for having the bad luck to run into the Danes.

Please let that bartender have gone out a back door to follow them. Oh God, what if there wasn’t a back door? What if she wasn’t even following them? What if Astrid had scared her off, with whatever she’d said at the table before?

“I’ll try not to hurt you,” He said softly. Kell stared back at him, and there was an awful blankness to his expression. He could see himself in that face, the first night, his own feeling of being out of his body after a while, when he'd stopped trying to fight them off and started trying to figure out how long his heart would still beat. Counting each beat, and asking himself if it would be the last one.

Two years, eight months, and sixteen days and it was still beating, but how many other hearts had gone still? 

Had the Craig that Astrid always screamed at while shooting her bow made this same face, at the end? Did they all make the same face in the end?

“Please,” Kell said, and his voice broke. “Please don’t do this to me.”

_ Please, no, _ he had begged with Ros lying dead beside him, before they stopped letting him talk at all. Astrid had laughed, finally pulling the ski mask off her head, and somehow the realization that she was a woman and not just a short, skinny man had made him even more frightened. He’d hardly been able to tell them apart, from where he laid on the floor. _ Please, please don’t do this, please- _

“_ No! _ ” He shouted it, pulling back, breaking away from Athos, shoving blindly. “I can’t! Fuck, I…” He lunged for the back door of the van, got it open, tumbled outside and landed hard on his hands and knees, a flash of pain up his ruined right hand, stomach heaving but nothing came up, nothing, he had nothing left. He spat into the dirt, but there was nothing left. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I _ can't!" _

Astrid let out a peal of laughter that rang through the night, found the fog and sunk into it. No one outside the dirt lot could even have heard her. She threw a book and his booklight out, the book smacking hard into his shoulder, and Holland let out a broken sob before his attention was suddenly caught by the booklight, one of those you could flick on and off with a little switch. “Too bad for your little gift. Guess he dies after all because of you. I’m going to take a photo of his face and post it up inside the van so you can look at it all day and see the body you’re responsible for. Athos, I’ll handle it in here, he’s only got about twenty more minutes before he’ll be useless to me anyway. You stay with Holland, you can have a turn when I’m done.”

Holland looked up into the night. He thought of the bartender asking him if he needed help, of trying to signal her, of the disappointment when nothing seemed to happen. It was faded by now - nothing ever happened - but at least they hadn’t realized he was trying this time.

But she’d seen he and Athos leaving, he was sure of it. He was _ sure of it. _ He was _ sure _ he’d seen her shadowing them at first. Was sure she was somewhere nearby, maybe just too far to know for sure where they were, maybe still looking.

He was so _ sure _ she had understood that he was asking for help and god damn it he could not be wrong about this. The body - the _ person _ \- in the van had an hour or less if he was wrong.

He had never thought about the bodies, when he didn’t have to. He’d tried so hard not to see them as people, but something in Kell's glassy, glossed-over blue eyes…

He wanted to save this one. 

Just this one.

Just this once.

_ Please, _ he prayed, although he had never believed in anything you could pray to. _ Please, please let me save this one, please, just this once let me save one. _

Holland stood, carefully bracing his left leg, which cracked with a little spike of pain from the hard landing in the dirt. He picked up the book and booklight and walked away, letting his foot drag a little, loudly, but sound didn't really carry through the fog. His heart pounded against his breastbone so hard he thought it might break through. _ Please, Lila Bard the Bartender, please please please. _

Athos came after him, slamming the van door shut, and Holland spun around, took a deep breath, and pulled Athos close to kiss him, putting everything he had, all the hateful desire they had always forced out of him, into it.

_ I hate you, but I can do anything I have to do. _

“I love you,” He whispered into Athos’s mouth. “I only want you and Astrid. I couldn’t do anything with anyone else.”

It was exactly what Athos wanted to hear, and exactly what would keep him from looking back at the van or anything around him. It had always been what Athos wanted to hear. It had taken Holland a year to give up and say it, even longer to let his brain give up and mean it. Sometimes. Except for when who he really was fought back to the surface and he didn't.

_ Whatever it takes, I can do whatever it takes. _

His left hand held Athos’s shirt gripped in his fingers, the right had the booklight and flashed it desperately in the darkness. The pain jolted his nerves when he forced his ruined hand to do what he wanted.

He’d tried to signal for help out the window. They’d bashed the hammer into his palm first, then broken each and every finger on his right hand, one by one. Astrid’s handmade splints and her mystery painkillers had gotten him through the first few weeks and Athos’s driving gloves had let him hide the worst of it but the hand had never healed, and it never would, and they had wrecked him in so many ways that fingers hardly mattered.

Flash-flash-flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash-flash-flash.

He kept it up, made the kiss go on and on, could feel Athos moving from surprise to delight to lust, and slid one arm up around his neck to hold him close while the other kept the light flashing. God, his hand hurt so badly.

_ Whatever it takes to save this one. _

Someone drove past, but if they saw the light, they didn't stop.

Flash-flash-flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash-flash-flash.

He pulled Athos down with him onto the ground, on his back in the dirt with Athos on top of him, Athos laughing, and Holland kept one arm up in the air with the light flashing, grunting with the pain. Athos took it as a different kind of sound entirely, was too distracted to notice anything else - and besides, Holland never used his right hand for anything anymore.

A motorcycle drove by, engine running ragged, sounding slow. When the sound stopped suddenly, Holland felt his heart skip a beat, and prayed to everything around him that he had been right.

_ Please, please, I don’t know why but I don’t want this one to die. _

Holland had long since lost any ability he’d ever had to resist his body’s reactions, but he never let his hand drop, no matter how much it hurt, and he never stopped flashing the light. 

_ Someone, please see this. I need help. He needs help. _

_ We need help. _

Flash-flash-flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash-flash-flash.

Then, just as Athos had started trying to pull up his shirt to take it off, Holland heard what he’d been waiting for. Footsteps running in the dirt.

The van door opened, and he heard her and knew, knew he'd been right, he'd been _ right _ . "Oh my god, Kell! Oh, you _ bitch!" _

He heard Astrid go, “What the _ fuck? _ The _ bartender?" _ Just as he and Athos broke apart to look, Holland saw the back of her short dark hair, her black shirt, her black pants, as she grabbed Astrid by the arm. 

"You have a goddamn _ murder van?!" _Lila Bard shouted and jammed a knife seemingly the size of her own head up between Astrid's ribs without hesitation, then dropped her hand down to grab at another one sticking out of her boot.

_ Oh, thank God, she’ll die, kill her, _ Holland thought with weak relief at the same moment the broken half of his brain said, _ Oh, God, no, I love her, don’t kill her what will I do if she’s dead? _

Astrid let out a growl of surprise and pain and jerked, looking down at herself as bright red blood, nearly black in the dim lights from the nearby streetlight, welled up around the blade, then slowly back up. "Did you just fucking _ stab me?" _

“Astrid?” Athos asked, dumbly, lumbering to his feet. "Astrid…?"

“Lila, I‘m sorry,” Kell tried to cry out, but his words slurred and ran together, hard understandable. “I shouldn't have... the second- secondary...”

"You have a fucking_ murder van!" _ Lila Bard shouted, second knife out, smaller but somehow deadlier looking than the first. "You are trying to murder someone _ right now!" _

Astrid bared her teeth and blood had smeared them pink, hers or Kell's, Holland didn't know. "Rape," she corrected icily, gesturing behind her, where Kell’s shirt had been mostly cut apart. "The van is for the rape. No one smart murders in the getaway car, you imbecile. I'm going to _ fucking kill you for interrupting me, _and I’m going to do it with your own goddamn knife.”

Astrid's stabbed her own smaller knife backwards without even turning her head, right through Kell's shoulder, pinning him against the backseat with a muffled, strangled scream. The chains attached to his cuffs rattled against the metal bar in the roof and then he went limp, his head dropping. 

Astrid threw herself forward, pulling the knife out as she went, blood welling and smearing between them as the two women all but fell out of the van.

Astrid fought like a cornered beast, coughing blood that sprayed across Lila's face, trying to stab her with her own huge knife. The bartender was clearly startled, struggling,, barely managing to avoid her, the two of them punching and stabbing and bleeding in an insane tangle.

“How the fuck are you so strong, I stabbed you!” She shouted into Astrid’s face.

Astrid spat a fat bit of blood right into her eyes and Lila cried out, trying to wipe it away. Astrid punched her across the jaw and jammed her knife into Lila’s shoulder, making her cry out in pain. “I’m strong _ because you fucking stabbed me!” _

"Astrid!" Athos moved towards them, grabbing at Lila, and Holland saw his chance.

He took a deep breath, curled his left hand into a fist, grabbed at Athos with his right. As the other man turned, he punched Athos across the face. Surprised by the hit he never saw coming, Athos went down hard at first, then looked up at Holland with a pure, unfiltered, betrayed anger, and spun out one foot, sweeping Holland’s legs backwards out from under him.

Holland slammed hard onto his knees on the ground and felt his left knee crack, agony flashing white across his vision, blinding him. “Fuck!” The broken half of Holland’s brain lit up with terror and he tried to scramble back, hands up to defend himself, trying to stand and then dropping back to the ground as his knee simply refused to take his weight. “I-I’m sorry, I just… I just-”

"Holland,” Athos growled, “What the _ fuck? _Get in the van."

Holland's eyes went to Kell, still back there, gasping breaths, limp and with the blood spreading from Astrid's knife.

"I said _ get in the van!" _

Holland nodded, eyes locked on the leather around Kell's wrists, and moved that way, leg dragging enough to leave a groove in the dirt. He could undo those leather cuffs fast, if Lila kept them fighting. Knife in her shoulder or not, she was still fighting, the two women were still grappling with each other, and Athos wasn't looking at him, he was moving to help his sister.

Get the cuffs unfastened, throw him out of the van, get him to Lila, make someone's luck change. They'd kill him for this and Holland didn't even care anymore, he'd been the walking dead for three years and he was fucking tired of just watching them die and doing nothing.

He climbed into the back of the van, groaning at his protesting knee, and started fumbling with the clasp over Kell's left wrist. 

"H-Holland cracks," Kell mumbled, head hanging. His red hair smelled like some kind of floral shampoo. 

"Holland cracks," Holland whispered back to him, "But Holland _isn't broken._"

He could save a life.

Just this one.

Just this once.

_ Please, whatever can hear me, please let me save just this one. _ **  
**


	25. Taskon Wedding Hell Fight, Round 1 (Prompt: Flowers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know I said Flowers would be cyberpunk, but this modern AU! ended up wanting to be a two-parter, so here you have Round 1 of the Taskon Wedding Hell Fight - starring Rhy, Kell, Holland, and Cora Taskon… with Maxim and Emira.
> 
> The last two modern AUs will be the next installment, Wedding, and the final of these challenges, Day 31, with the prompt: There Was Only One Bed.

Of  _ course _ Cora Taskon, the groom’s youngest sister, caught the bouquet. Any other option would have been unacceptable, and things had a way of working out exactly how the second-youngest child of the Taskon family wanted.

Kell was sitting at a circular table with Rhy’s parents across from them, Holland at his left, Rhy at his right, and a single empty chair where Luc would have been… if Emira hadn’t simply refused to allow him to come at the last minute. His name was even written on the little place card in front of the empty plate, and Rhy had been glaring at the perfectly printed  _ Alucard Emery  _ ever since they sat them down after the wedding had ended nearly forty minutes ago.

It wasn’t like them to risk others  _ noticing  _ they had done such a thing, but they disliked Luc (who had the temerity not to be upper-crust pretentious shit like everyone else here) more than they disliked the idea of being rude. 

Cora, currently being hugged by what seemed like a mob of similar-looking girls who somehow weren’t actually her relatives, was still in her sort of light pink bridesmaid dress (she’d told Kell the name of the color earlier and it was something like ‘ballet’, but honestly, Kell was pretty sure at a certain point color names didn’t mean anything and it just looked like light pink to him), but she’d ditched the sky-high heels for bare feet. 

Her skin was deeply tanned and her hair was pulled back against the nape of her neck, with just a few tendrils hanging down in perfectly curled sections to just barely brush the tops of her bare shoulders. Kell could see her pink-painted toes, the exact same shade as her dress, as she jumped up high, shrieking wildly with excitement, waving the pink-and-yellow rose bouquet around over her head.

Holland, sitting next to him, leaned over and murmured, “That’s the girl that had a crush on you?”

Kell snorted. “Yeah, when she was like seven, before she figured herself out. And figured me out. Before I figured  _ myself  _ out.”

“What did you figure out, then?” Holland asked, a note of wry amusement in his voice, the same voice he had sometimes when he would be working on his thesis and stop, turn to Kell, and say,  _ you didn't come over here just to watch me type _ . Kell swallowed, hard, wanting to smile but not wanting Rhy to see him smiling, with his boyfriend here but Rhy’s banished to the land of Not Good Enough For Maxim and Emira.

It felt disloyal to be glad Holland was here if Luc couldn't be.

Luc had been furious at being disinvited, angrier than Kell had ever seen him, and was probably off with Lila Bard doing something illegal with the Dane twins. They had  _ also  _ been furious they weren’t invited, despite knowing literally no one involved, and Astrid’s first suggestion for revenge had been that weddings were always more interesting with gasoline and a match.

“I figured out that it was never going to be someone like Cora,” Kell said softly, pitching his voice just low enough that Maxim and Emira couldn’t hear him over the music. “No matter how much they wanted it to be. That it would always be someone like you.”

Holland didn’t say anything back, but Kell could see him smile. 

“For one thing, Cora Taskon absolutely would not put up with my taste in music or movies."

“Good to know our relationship has a solid foundation of me putting up with you,” Holland said teasingly, but then hesitated at the look on Kell’s face. “Hey, um, it was just a joke. I'm sorry. I  _ like _ your music, you know that.”

“No, I do, I just.” Kell frowned. “I'm just on edge. Sorry.”

“Kell, are you okay?” Holland leaned in a little closer. “You’ve been like this all day.”

“I hate weddings with them,” Kell muttered, glad the music was still just loud enough. 

“Why?”

Cora, spinning around, caught his eye and raised the bouquet back up, waving it at him. “Kell!” She shouted. “Kell, I caught it! Look!”

Cora looked gorgeous today, but then, Cora Taskon never looked anything else - she wouldn’t have left the house without a full face of makeup and tailored clothes. Kell had known her since she was born, and knew that half the reason she was in such a good mood was just that she’d spent the whole day looking better than the bride (who she didn’t like, although she didn’t like her brother, either - Cora didn't like a lot of people), and was in about ten thousand photos to prove it.

He put a smile on his face and waved back at her to show he’d heard. “Great, Cora, can’t wait to go to your wedding!” He yelled as cheerfully as he could, which mostly meant he only sounded a little bit sarcastic.

Cora knew him as well as he knew her, though, and only laughed and waved the flowers at Rhy. “Rhy! Look! I’m the next to get married!” 

“Wouldn’t  _ that  _ be lovely,” Emira said cheerfully, seated across from them around the circular table, leaning her chin on one perfectly manicured hand.

“Shit, here we go,” Kell muttered. “You’re about to _ see  _ why.”

“What?” Holland asked in a whispered aside, leaning forward. He’d been uneasy and nervous this whole time and Kell knew it, but still… when he’d seen the +1 on the invitation, Holland was the only person he could imagine bringing.

“Don’t start this again, Mom,” Rhy groaned, slumped back in his chair on Kell’s right with a scowl on his face and two empty glasses that had once held his weird fruity drinks in front of him. 

“I’m not starting anything,” Emira said, the picture of innocence. “Just that it’s been a beautiful wedding. Honestly, Cora's such a hidden jewel in the Taskon family, and I hope some worthwhile young man snaps her right up.” She winked at Rhy. "She'll make a good match."

“I wouldn’t worry about a _ man  _ being the one to do that,” Kell said, a little dryly. Emira was sitting directly around the table from Kell, and he was trying not to look at her. 

Rhy let out a barking laugh.

Emira frowned. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m just as sure that you _ do _ know what he means,” Rhy said smoothly. “Cora Taskon likes  _ girls.  _ So stop trying to get me to marry her.”

Holland blinked. “To do  _ what? _ ”

“Long story,” Kell said quietly.

“I’m not trying to get you to marry her at all, Rhy! I’m hurt that you think I would try to force you in any way into a relationship you weren’t comfortable with.”

“It's not about discomfort. She’s  _ gay!”  _ Rhy looked back and forth between his parents, incredulous. 

“Hm.” Emira looked over at the group of girls. “Her father assures me it’s just exploration of her options.” 

“That is  _ not _ how being gay works!”

Cora had looked back at them, and Kell saw the knowledge in her eyes. Even if she couldn’t hear them, Cora had seen their fights before. Maxim and Emira tried to hide it, but Cora had been there to see the first time Rhy brought Luc home, and had seen the second half at least of the day Kell turned eighteen and Maxim put the contract down in front of him to sign his life over to Rhy. 

_It says here you can choose your major and we'll cover all your costs. _Maxim pointed at one paragraph. _In return, you'll agree that any future career will be put on hold should Rhy need your help, and you will take no career that involves routine travel of a distance greater than 500 miles in any direction from where Rhy is. _

Kell remembered staring down at the paper, feeling sick.

_Rhy just needs you so much, sweetie,_ Emira had said, a hand on his shoulder. _He's going to need someone who is always watching his back out there, businesses are cutthroat. You'll get a spot on the board, in time, so you'll be in on all the meetings, too. You and Rhy are inseparable, it's really no different than how you are right now._

_What if I don't want to do any of that?_

_Then you'll owe us your tuition costs._

_Plus, _Emira had said, gently. _Don't you think Rhy would be so heartbroken if you left him to figure it out all alone?_

Kell had swallowed and signed his name. 

Cora turned to speak to one of her friends, but glanced back at Kell thoughtfully.  _ Do you need help?  _ She mouthed at him.

_ Maybe,  _ he mouthed back.

“Well, we’ll see,” Emira was saying to Rhy. “Cora understands her obligations to her family, so I’ve no doubt she’ll make the right choice in the end for the Taskon family holdings.”

“The right  _ choice? _ ”   


“You know what I meant, Rhy.”

"Rhy, don’t put words in your mother’s mouth." Maxim frowned. He was in a suit and Emira in a modestly-cut silk dress, and both were the exact same shade of red as Rhy’s suit. Even the color of their footwear matched. “Besides, once you finish this phase with Alucard, it’ll be time to consider finding someone more appropriate for  _ your  _ image.”

“This  _ phase? _ More  _ appropriate? _ ”

“Cora would be a good choice. Honestly, you never showed any interest in young men until  _ Kell  _ did.”

“Kell is two years older than I am! He just went through  _ puberty first! _ ” Rhy started.

“Rhy.” Kell shifted uneasily in his gray suit, and felt Holland’s hand slowly reach for his under the table, grabbing on tightly. He squeezed once, trying to make himself relax. “Let it go.”

He should have warned Holland - that all his little comments about his upbringing, or the half of his conversations with Emira Holland could hear when she called (because for some reason Kell never, ever let her go to voicemail even though he knew he should)... none of it could prepare you for what it was like up close and personal, and things like weddings brought it out the most. Rhy’s sunshine dropped out of him around them, pushed out by the constant pressure he was under, and Kell felt five years old all over again, hardly able to speak, crushed under the weight of how  _ grateful _ he was supposed to be _ . _

The music was just loud enough that the other families and groups couldn't hear them, and Kell wanted to sink under the table until it was over.

“Of course you know we always enjoy Alucard’s company,” Emira said, she and Maxim both glancing around to ensure no one had overheard the tension at the table. “But he’s not exactly the right choice for someone who is going to run a large-scale corporation and needs to project the correct image, is he?”

“What’s wrong with him? Is it the eyebrow ring?”

“No, dear,” Emira said, and the sincerity in her face had always been the worst part about these traps that he and Rhy always fell into. "You know, Devon Taskon has one, too-"

"Yeah, because he saw Luc's."

“Luc’s just not Maresh Corporations  _ material _ , is he?”

"What does  _ that mean?" _

"Rhy, please," Kell said quietly. "Don't give them the opening."

Rhy rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t have to work at the  _ company _ , Mom. His band-"

Maxim coughed into one hand. "Well there's part of the issue right there. You know we appreciate a musician, of course, but Vampire-"

" _ Night Spire. _ "

"Right. That's the wrong image for you entirely."

"Do I not get to decide my own image?"

"No." Maxim turned to look at him, but first his eyes were on Kell, and he could read the thoughts there.  _ What have you been saying to Rhy to make him feel this way, Kell? _ "I understand it can be difficult to need to put your whims below a higher responsibility, but of course Maresh Corp should always come first."

"The business is where everything you have comes from," Emira said helpfully. "If you don’t continue our success with Maresh Corp, what else would you have?”

“A perfectly happy, normal life with my husband?”

“Rhy. Be reasonable. You’re not going to  _ marry _ him. Besides, don't you want to be able to support Kell?"

" _ Support _ me?” Kell groaned. “I have my degree now!"

Emira looked at him with a sort of patronizing affection. "In  _ Anthropology,  _ dear. What can you possibly do with a degree like that?”

He heard Holland take in a breath next to him and squeezed hard at his hand. 

Kell just stared at her, fifteen different angry responses all fighting for prominence and none of them winning.

"Close your mouth, Kell," Maxim said. "You'll let in flies. Now someone like Cora,  _ she _ knows how to represent her family. She's going into business law, and she looks  _ lovely  _ today.”

"She always looks lovely,” Rhy replied with a flatness that was just shy of hostility. “Cora Taskon makes it her singular goal to look lovely every moment of every day.”

“Well, she definitely succeeds. She’ll go far in life, understanding the value of appearances,” Emira said. “Something  _ you _ could stand to think a bit more about, Kell.”

"But I-"

“Kell looks fine,” Rhy said, rolling his eyes. “He looks  _ fine,  _ Mom. The suit fits and he had it tailored before he came, it’s fine.”

"Well of course it’s fine,” Emira said, sniffing a little. “You swore to me you would help him get dressed to make sure he was appropriate for the occasion.”

“You told her you would  _ help me get dressed? _ ” Kell asked, turning to glare at Rhy. “I’m not five! I’m a grown man!”

“It’s what she wanted to hear,” Rhy snapped back. “Don't let them make us mad at each other, that's what she wants. That’s always what they want.”

“Rhy!” Emira put a hand over her heart, tears welling up in her eyes. “How can you speak about me like I’m not even here like this? How could you imply I'd be so cruel?"

“Because you always do this?”

“I do not.” The tears were threatening to spill over, and Kell knew the exact series of emotions Rhy went through without even having to look at him. Anger, exhaustion, love, guilt for upsetting her. “I can’t believe you would be so hurtful, Rhy.”

Rhy pressed his lips together in a thin line, and then after a pause, he said heavily, “I’m sorry, Mom. I know that you mean well. I’m just trying to say that he didn’t need my help. Kell is doing fine on his own.”

Emira looked at Kell with a critical eye. “Is he, though, darling?”

“I’m sitting right here, Emira,” Kell said, his free hand closing over the fabric of his pants, feeling his fingernails dig in right through the fabric into one thigh. “You can just tell me if you have a problem with what I’m wearing.”

“Of course I don’t have a  _ problem  _ with it,” She said. “I’m just saying that Cora really puts in the effort and it shows. If it were up to you, Kell, you’d have shown up in one of your  _ flannels _ .”

“I would not! I know how to wear a suit to a wedding!” 

“Don’t raise your voice so much,” Emira said coldly. She glanced over at him, her eyes moving down to the suit jacket and back up to his face, in a way that made Kell flush furiously at the judgement there. “Kell, think about  _ appearances,  _ just once. And do something about your hair.”

“What is wrong with my hair?” Kell combed at it with his fingers, until he saw Holland watching him, and let his hand slowly drop.

“Your hair looks fine,” Holland said softly. “I like the way your hair looks.”

Kell smiled at him, and when he looked up Cora was still watching them from across the room, hands on her hips, her lower lip jutting out in a way he recognized immediately as the youngest Taskon girl getting herself ready for battle. 

“Please don’t be upset, Kell,” Emira said, reaching over the table as if to put a hand on his, although he had one hand on Holland’s and the other was still clutching the fabric of his pants. “I never intend to be critical, but that suit doesn't quite fit.”

_ You just don’t quite fit, do you? _

“If you want him to look like us,” Rhy said, each word very carefully pronounced, leaning forward until he was nearly breaking the line of sight between Emira and Kell, putting himself between them as best he could, “you could have gotten him a red suit, too.”

There was a small pause. “Red’s not really his color,” Emira said. 

“Oh, shit,” Holland said out loud, in a voice just above a whisper.

“Excuse me,” Kell said suddenly, pushing his chair back and standing up. “Maybe I should go get something to drink.”

“You look upset, Kell,” Maxim said, his voice stern as always. His dark eyes flicked over at Kell only briefly, as if looking over a bothersome insect, before going back to his usual carefully casual smile into the crowd in general. “Sit back down until you’re composed. Don’t draw attention.”

“I’m not  _ upset,  _ I just… do you  _ have _ to say things like that? When Holland is here?”

“Like what?” Emira asked, blinking at him, her eyes watering almost immediately, an expression of hurt coming across her face. “What did I say?”

“Just… everything about  _ me. _ ”

“Oh, Kell. Of course I never mean to hurt you. You know we care for you very much, ever since we found you on that list of available children, we’ve always cared for you.”

“Kell wasn’t a goddamn  _ puppy for sale, Mom! _ ” 

“Watch your language, Rhy,” Maxim snapped at him. “And keep your voice down.”

Emira looked up at him, and her expression was a wounded deer, and Kell felt like slime. He always did, when this happened, when he fell into the trap again. “Oh, Kell, I’m so sorry. I would never say anything to hurt you intentionally, I meant no such thing. I’m  _ so sorry  _ if you’ve chosen to be hurt by something I said. You know we’ve always loved having you stay with us.”

“It’s okay, Emira,” Kell said, even though it wasn’t. It was always easier to just say it was okay, it always had been.

“I’d hope you weren’t upset, with you being a grown adult,” Maxim snorted. "We've taught you to be tougher than  _ that _ . Not to mention your… background."

Kell swallowed, hands slowly clenching into fists. “Please don't bring that up,” he said, finally, sounding defeated. “It's fine, Emira. But I just-”

“Sit down, Kell,” Maxim said again.

Kell sat.

“You’re upsetting your foster mother and embarrassing yourself in front of your partner.” 

“You  _ adopted him! _ ” Rhy looked like he wanted to throw something at them. “When the adoption papers go through, he stops being a foster son!”

“He’s not embarrassing himself.” Holland spoke up, and his voice was strong and steady but still kind and warm, not a voice to threaten the moment but to reassure Kell himself. He put one hand up against Kell's back, a reassuring, solid warmth against his spine. “He’s not doing anything that bothers me. Kell is handling things remarkably well, to be frankly honest with the both of you." Holland was staring around the table, and he tried not to look at him, his face burning with shame.

Maxim and Emira both looked at him, and Holland only sat up straight, his eyes slightly narrowed, and Kell felt a little bit like a kid in a fight, with a bigger kid stepping in front of him to take the blows.

When he’d invited him, he had forgotten that they were like this, that Holland would see it in person for the first time. It was one thing to tell someone about your parents, it was another thing to have them meet and see your parents doing all of the things you said they did, right there in public.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say that,” Emira said with a fragile sincerity. “Kell needs someone who can handle these moments when he forgets himself.”

“That is not what I meant. I’ve never seen him act like this before today,” Holland said quietly, but the meaning was clear enough if any of them chose to take it. 

There was a silence, for just a moment.

“Cora’s sharp as a tack, too,” Maxim said thoughtfully, as though the conversation had never changed at all, and Kell let out a breath all at once. Sometimes that meant it was over, when Maxim changed the subject, that they’d found someone else to pick at and they’d leave him alone for a while. Then he continued, “Just turned eighteen and already a sophomore in pre-law.  _ Kell  _ didn’t even  _ start _ until he was nearly twenty and even then he went into the humanities.”

_ Oh, God damn it. _

“Well, Kell started with a delay, you know,” Emira said helpfully. “He tested so badly in all his basic skills, I don’t know  _ what  _ they taught him at those foster homes-”

“Yeah,” Kell muttered, but he kept his eyes down this time. “I don't know either.”

“... we always thought the private tutor would help him to catch up. I can’t imagine how delayed he’d have been without it.”

"That wasn't why you kept him out of school," Rhy said darkly. "Was it, Mom?"

"I have no idea to what you are referring."

"Yes you do. You didn't want him in school with  _ me.  _ You didn't want people to _see us together."_

"What a terrible thing to say," Emira said faintly.

Rhy picked up Luc's name card off the table and stuck it in his pocket. "Yeah, well, maybe it's time we start  _ saying things  _ instead of lying about them."

“I wasn't delayed, anyway _ , _ ” Kell protested. “I picked it up fine once someone was teaching me.” Holland squeezed his hand again, looking between Kell and his parents, his green eyes considered and thoughtful behind those black glasses. 

“Besides which, he only took time off before college to decide what he wanted to do,” Rhy said with a drawl, holding up one hand to signal a waiter. “I  _ envy _ the freedom of getting to pick your major.”

“You were given several very viable options for your Bachelor’s Degree-” Maxim began.

“And every single one of them designed to provide skills for Maresh Corp.”

“What else would you do, Rhy? Maresh Corp is our legacy. You were always going to inherit it.”

“Good thing I didn’t have childhood dreams of becoming a vet, huh?" Rhy grabbed the waiter by the sleeve, giving him a bright and charming smile. "Can I have another one of whatever the signature cocktail was?” As soon as the black-and-white clad man left, the smile dropped right off Rhy’s face. 

“It’s not unusual to take time off,” Holland spoke up, and Kell watched him hesitate when Maxim and Emira both turned sharp gazes in his direction. “I… um. I just mean that it’s pretty normal, we have lots of students at Arnes U who take a couple of years before they start. Kell was really on-track just fine with his graduation schedule. I took time off, myself, to save up money to pay my way through. Although my stepsiblings do give me a place to stay rent-free."

“See, Rhy,  _ his _ siblings are supporting him," Emira said, turning the full force of her fragile, don’t-hurt-me expression on him. "You and Kell can easily do the same." Kell wanted to push her away, suddenly, keep Holland to himself before she could get to him. People fell for that expression all the time, decided Kell was the mean ungrateful  _ foster son _ and Emira the long-suffering put-upon devoted saintly mother, and he couldn’t handle it if Holland fell for it, too.

Kell had dated a girl, one of Rhy’s friends from school, who had witnessed one of these fights and afterward asked him why he wasn’t more grateful for everything the Mareshes had done for him, that he should be happier about his wealth and the big house and all of it. Kell had broken up with her on the spot. Rhy had cheered him on.

“Yes, that’s one thing we liked about you when Kell told us about your relationship,” Maxim said with a firm nod. He did everything firmly; nodded, spoke, insulted Kell's existence, drank his martini. “You sound like a man with determination to succeed despite the odds, and I appreciate that. That’s a good influence on Kell, and I’m glad to see it. I’m a self-made man myself, you know.”

Rhy snorted bitterly, but Kell smacked him in the leg before he could say anything.  _ That  _ was  _ definitely not  _ the argument to start right here at the Taskon wedding reception.

“Thank you, sir,” Holland said graciously, but his voice was a little cold, deeper than usual even, and Kell thought he hadn’t been fooled by Emira’s shattered-glass look, or by Maxim’s flattery, and relaxed just a little. Maybe they would get through this somehow. 

For a few minutes, things were calm, things were okay. Maxim and Emira stopped the constant barrage of insults and instead asked questions. Holland answered them easily enough, and for once there were no strange new surprises about Holland’s life that came tumbling out that Kell had never heard before. 

Cora had noticed the lift in tension at the table, but Kell caught her watching him from time to time. She’d never exactly been his  _ friend _ . She was more like an ally in a war fought by the two of them against their parents. Each of them had stepped up to defend the other from overbearing, overprotective, insulting parents in the past.

He listened to Holland’s answers and kept quiet, for now. A year in, he knew the basics, and he watched Holland walk Maxim through a carefully sanitized rendition of the basic facts of his life: his father and stepmother who lived in Florida, a brother who had died, his stepsiblings, dropping out of school to get a job young and having to get his GED by taking classes during the day while working the night shift, the Danes’ band first taking off and them offering Holland a better place to stay than where he’d been living before, Marjori Dane selling off some ancestral land back in Europe and giving all three of them an equal cut, helping Holland get through grad school with less in student loans. 

The mention of Marjori Dane's wealth did not surprise them, and Kell realized all at once why Luc had been disinvited but Holland hadn't.

Only one of them had a family that still had money.

There were bits left out that Kell knew by now, of course - the homeless thing after his brother had a breakdown and tried to kill him, the lying about his age to get the night shift job, the way he’d been alternately frightened of and fascinated by the Danes until the day they’d voted him in as part of the family. Those were things Holland didn’t tell other people, but Kell knew, and there was something amazing in knowing both of them knew things about each other that no one else around them had the right to.

“See, that’s a great success story,” Maxim said, emphasizing his point by jabbing the toothpick with the little olive from his martini forward. “Determination. Grit. Work ethic. Kell’s going to need that kind of influence when he helps Rhy with the business.”

“Maxim, we’ve talked about this. I’m not going to work for Maresh Corp-”

“Not right away, we understand you want some time to play around with that degree. But really, it all depends on whether or not Rhy needs you,” Emira said, tapping the side of her wineglass with a fingernail. The little  _ tap, tap, tap _ was going to drive him crazy.

"Play  _ around _ with-"

“No,” Rhy said, taking a very long drink from his glass. “It doesn’t depend on that. I'll do just fine with the company. He doesn't have to work for me. He can go anywhere he wants to go.”

“He’s got a signed contract that says he stays close to home,” Maxim said pointedly. “He signed it himself.”

Holland sat up. “The contract says  _ what?  _ That can't be legally enforceable."

“Please don’t ask,” Kell said softly. 

His eighteenth birthday had definitely been the worst one.

“Rhy got a rugby scholarship _ , _ ” Maxim said, sipping at his own vodka martini. "Nice to have someone in the family save us that kind of money.”

“Which I hate,” Rhy said, putting his hands behind his head. He smirked, an ugly expression on a pretty face. “I hated rugby. And baseball. And that year you made me play football. And all the other sports I ever tried.”

“I played rugby in college, and you’ve always been athletic. It’s perfectly normal for a young man to try out a variety of sports, and rugby was the one you were best suited for.”

“Didn’t exactly get a choice, did I? You picked rugby.”

“Rhy,” Kell said softly. “Not worth it.”

“I didn’t even  _ want  _ to go to private school.” Rhy ignored Kell entirely, keeping his eyes on the dance floor, watching Cora spin in giggling circles with another girl her age,  _ her  _ plus one, although Kell knew she was still keeping an eye on them. “I wanted to go to public school. I could have met Luc  _ years ago. _ ”

“Not even an option,” Emira said, attempting to sound serene and unbothered, but Kell knew her too well for that; he saw her hand tighten around the stem of her wineglass, the way her smile went brittle, the little giveaways he’d spent nearly his whole life tiptoeing around. “Public school is such a… risk.”

“A risk of what, Mother?” Rhy asked coldly. The waiter put his new drink down in front of him and he picked it up and took a sip without ever looking away from her. 

“Well, you know,” Emira said vaguely, looking off in another direction. 

“No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”

“Rhy,” Kell tried again, a little more emphatic this time. “Not the time.” He closed his eyes briefly, trying to fight back the headache starting to beat alongside his pulse in his temples. Next to him, he felt Holland lean a little closer to him, the faint smell of his cologne in the air around him, the slight shift in his chair that he always did when he was nervous. 

“You okay?” Holland asked in his low, warm voice, and Kell tried to remind himself to relax.

“It’s fine,” He said softly. “This is how it always is.”

“You were already dealing with… difficulties at home,” Emira said, and Kell’s eyes flew back open. “Public school would have meant even more exposure to influences like…” She trailed off, looking at Kell. 

Wasn’t he at least supposed to be less hurt by this now that he was an adult?

“Kell has been my best friend since he came to stay with us!” Rhy looked stricken, too, and at least there had always been one person on his side, Kell thought. Rhy had always been there for him. And now, with Holland sitting next to him, there was one more.

For the first time, he and the people on his side outnumbered Maxim and Emira.

“I’d rather not speak about it in front of his partner, but of course that's part of the problem, Rhy,” Emira said. "Kell has his own issues with his  _ background _ , we were concerned you might pick some of them up." 

"That Emery boy is good proof that he  _ has _ picked them up," Maxim snorted. "And who knows what  _ else _ ."

Kell heard the expertly crafted poison in the words and knew it for what it was.  _ I don’t even have to say a thing, now he knows there’s something wrong with you, Kell, something you can't even remember. _

“Emira, please-”

"No,” Rhy said, and his voice was louder than before. He slammed his glass down on the table. Out of the corner of his eye, Kell saw Cora spin around at the sound, a grimly determined polite smile on her face, and start heading their direction without hesitating. “What about Kell's _background-"_

“Well… you know,” Emira said, her eyes flickering around all three of them. “Who even  _ knows.  _ No one seems to know what happened to him before they found him, except of course for the scars-”

“We don’t talk about those in public,” Kell said through gritted teeth. “That was  _ your _ rule, Emira, that I never mention them in public."

Emira ignored him. “You've always thought people like him were _ interesting _ and it's the reason you insist on spending time with people like  _ Alucard Emery- _ ”

"What about Kell’s childhood makes me date Luc, Mom?! Enlighten me! I’m so fucking curious!”

“Rhy!” Maxim snapped, smacking his hand onto the table. "Language!" Rhy didn’t even flinch, only stared his mother down. 

Emira did not shatter, like she usually did. She did not fall into pieces and make her sons pick them back up. Instead, she turned to Rhy, looked him right in the eyes, and said patiently, “You already know, dear."

"Why did you even decide to bring him home if you thought where he lived before would be a  _ bad influence? _ " Rhy spat the words.

"We didn't know that  _ then.  _ The situation was fluid, we needed to make decisions quickly. And we couldn't very well change course after the fact."

"Change  _ course?" _

"Rhy, don't say it-" Kell put out a hand, but Rhy knocked it away.

"Do you mean that you couldn't  _ give him back?!" _ Rhy pushed himself to his feet, glaring down at his parents. "He's not a  _ sweater! _ "

"People are looking," Emira said icily.

"Let. Them. Look. Let's see  _ this  _ show up in your goddamn magazine articles!"

"Oh, this is fucked up," Holland said under his breath. Louder, he said, "Kell, let's get something to drink. Now."

"What a great idea!" Cora said brightly, sweeping around behind them draped in pink and smelling like that weird magnolia perfume she wore, giving Kell a wink. "Mind if I steal these handsome devils for just a sec, Mrs. Maresh? I've never met Kell's boyfriend before, I've been looking forward to it for weeks!"

With someone outside the family present, the hostility melted from everyone but Kell almost instantly. Even Rhy had on his sunshine smile, brilliant enough to catch the attention of passerby, bringing all the light out in his handsome face. If anyone walked up right this second, they’d have seen Kell as the problem… just like always.

"What perfect timing," Rhy said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. "You always know just when to make your entrance, Cora."

"I've practiced for years," Cora said, and slid her hand through Kell's arm. "Kell, you are absolutely dashing today. Come be my Prince Charming and let's go grab some drinks!"

"You're eighteen, Cora," Maxim said with kindly warmth, wagging a finger. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you say that."

"Ah, bring them back safe and sound," Emira said with a sweet and loving smile. “Go have some fun, boys. We'll talk more later."

"Like hell we will," Kell said under his breath.

"No, we definitely will. I have some things to  _ say _ ," Rhy muttered.

Cora led them away, waving and smiling at people she passed. Under her breath, she said to Kell, “What’d she say this time?”

“Oh, it was a greatest hits album of bullshit,” Rhy said, dark eyes narrowed. “For Kell, for me… Kell, were they putting on a  _ show _ for Holland or what?”

“Seems like that, doesn't it?"

"What were they trying to  _ accomplish? _ "

Kell just shrugged.

They moved into a small empty anteroom and Cora flung herself down into a nearby chair. “I know something you don’t know,” Cora sang.

“What do you know that we don’t?” Rhy asked, raising one eyebrow in a perfect arch. Kell had always wished he could do that, but whenever he tried, either both his eyebrows went up and just made him look startled or nothing happened at all.

Cora grinned. “There are four, count ‘em,  _ four _ bottles of champagne in that mini fridge over there. That’s one for each of us, and everyone knows champagne heals all wounds.”

“I think that’s time, actually,” Kell said, but he was starting to smile a little.

“Time doesn’t do shit, liquor does. Open one up for me, Rhy.”

“On it, Cor. Should've known you'd lead us to the secret alcohol room. You’re my absolute favorite of the lesbians my dad keeps setting me up with.”

“You’re my best "if I weren't the gayest" bi, baby, and you know it,” Cora said, laughing as Rhy poured her a glass, then poured everyone else some champagne, too. 

“I thought _ I  _ was your best bi,” Kell said, taking his own glass and downing it all at once.

“Hmmm, but then Rhy poured me champagne, so you see the competition is fierce.” Cora grinned, looking Holland up and down slowly. “So _ this _ is Holland Vosijk. I always knew you’d like older men, Kell, but that suit with those glasses… whew." She whistled. "Even  _ I'd  _ date him."

“Uh… thank… you. Pleased to meet you,” Holland said, looking completely overwhelmed. “Can… I ask a really stupid question?”

“Ask away!”

“I know there’s probably an answer that's terrible, but… why  _ aren’t  _ you wearing a red suit if everyone else is wearing red, Kell?”

Kell licked his lips, pressing them together, and Rhy shifted uncomfortably. He was just opening his mouth to answer when Cora sat up, leaned forward, and smiled. “Do you really want to know? It’s  _ super fucked up. _ ”

“Cora, please,” Kell said, downing the rest of his champagne all at once and pouring the rest out of the bottle into his glass, pulling the next bottle out of the fridge. 

“You just drink yourself happy, Kell, and let me handle this one. I got you, darling. Kell’s not wearing a red suit because they’re only matching to do family photos later.”

“So?” Holland looked over at Kell, but he could see the second he realized why, before Cora ever had to answer.

He could  _ see _ Holland’s expression change, and bitterly lifted a champagne glass in a mocking toast.

“Kell," Holland said softly, holding an arm out. Kell shook his head, crossing his arms in front of himself, slouching over. After a half-second of hesitation Holland went to  _ him,  _ leaning his forehead against the side of Kell's head. "Shit, really?"

“Exactly,” Cora said, tapping the side of her nose with one finger. 

Rhy was the one to say it out loud, and his voice was dark and furious.

“He doesn’t match us because _Kell_ is never in the family photos.”


	26. At Least Let Me Ask First (Taskon Wedding Hell Fight Round 2, Prompt: Wedding)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taskon Wedding Hell Fight, Round 2!
> 
> Strap yourselves in, because... well... you'll see!

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Holland said incredulously. The other three simply stared at him, Cora with a mocking smile directed more at the idea than at him, Kell with a very old pain in those blue eyes, and Rhy with absolute fury. “He’s not in any of the _ photos? _”

“They put him in the company Christmas photo,” Rhy said darkly. “So people won’t talk. They keep the articles he was in when they brought him home framed. Sometimes if magazine people come over, Mom puts up some photos she’s taken of him so it’s less obvious all the other photos are of me.” Rhy opened up the next bottle of champagne, and he and Kell both took drinks straight from the bottle. 

“Because they are _ fucked up, _” Cora sing-songed, sitting back in her chair, kicking her feet up over one arm, as though her incredibly expensive bridesmaid dress was just sweatpants and an old T-shirt. “You want more stories? I’ve got some fucking stories for you, Holland Vosijk. The first year, they spent like three grand on Rhy’s Christmas presents, and all Kell got-”

“Stop it, Cora,” Kell snapped. “He doesn’t need to know all of it. Presents don’t matter, they’re just _ things. _”

“Fuck, Kell, don’t just repeat what they _ tell you _ ,” Cora grunted. “How about when you _ begged them _ to go to school with Rhy and they told you all of your _ problems _ would be bad for their _ reputation?” _

“Wait, that’s really why?”

“I was going through a phase,” Kell said, taking another drink from the bottle, all but chugging the champagne from it. There had been times, before, when Kell would be strange and angry and refused to talk or see him, and it clicked into place for Holland all at once that it had always been after a conversation with _ them. _“I was acting out.”

“No, you weren’t, Kell!” Rhy groaned. “You were being _ fourteen years old, _ who _ doesn’t _ act out at fourteen! I started _ drinking _ at fourteen, and they never even noticed, they were too busy being up _ your _ ass about everything and treating you like a goddamn criminal!”

Holland felt like he had walked into a soap opera, or a teen movie, and wanted badly to simply turn and walk out of it. He was nearly thirty years old, and he’d lived a lot of life in that time, but nothing had ever been like this for _ him. _

“Stop trying to justify them, Kell,” Cora drawled. “And stop drinking all my champagne. What about when you got into all those Ivy League schools and they made you go to Arnes U because Rhy was going there?”

Holland blinked. “You got into _ Ivy League schools? _”

Kell laughed, a little bitterly. “I’m not as stupid as I look.”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“No, I know it’s not. I’m. I’m sorry, Holl. It was only two of them, and anyway, it was just nice to know I made it in. I didn’t mind staying here for Rhy.”

“But that’s not the point, Kell,” Rhy said, enunciating each word with great care in the way of the rapidly-getting-seriously-drunk, and Holland could tell this was a very old conversation indeed. “The point is that if you want to leave, to travel places, you should be allowed to! You shouldn’t be stuck never going anywhere just because of me!”

“Yeah, well, it’s in the goddamn _ contract _, isn’t it?”

“Jesus Christ.” There was something he’d been thinking about for weeks now, and it rang louder and louder in the back of his mind. He looked over at Kell, whose face was a mask of hurt and anger. “Kell, you’ve never told me-”

“It didn’t come up,” Kell mumbled, pulling away from him again, stalking across the little room, leaning over with his hand on a wooden side table that had a spray of fresh pink-and-yellow roses in a vase. “You went through so much, I just - I didn’t feel like being the poor little rich boy-”

“Kell.”

Kell didn’t look at him, didn’t even turn in his direction. He kept his eyes on the roses, and Holland tried to think of the right thing to do. He’d never been good at this; it’d been just him and his brother and his dad for so long, and then once his brother had gone crazy it was just he and Dad, then alone on couches and halfway houses, and then the Danes - who were never upset about _ anything _ \- and he had no idea what you said in a moment like this.

There was one thing he’d been thinking about, and he worried if he asked, Kell would say no.

Rhy crossed the room, and Holland watched with no small amount of jealousy as Kell’s adopted brother slid an arm around his shoulders with total ease and familiarity and leaned in, saying something in his ear just a little too low for Holland to hear it. Kell nodded, putting one hand up over his face, rubbing his palm at one eye.

Why did Rhy know what to say and he didn’t? He should know what to say, Kell was his boyfriend after all, they’d been together for a year. But while Kell talked about his family and he’d heard some pretty weird conversations with Emira, Kell had never said it was this bad. He’d never once given away that his home life was such absolute shit.

Holland had even rolled his eyes, once or twice, when Kell complained about things that seemed like rich people problems, but this wasn’t like the tailor keeping a pair of pants an extra week or having to figure out logistics for the company Christmas party.

_ So ask him. Just ask him. _

_ What if he says no? _

“My stepsiblings,” He said out loud, “are insane.”

Cora raised an eyebrow, leaning to one side with her cheek and chin resting on her hand. “I’m interested in seeing where _ this _ is going.”

Rhy and Kell didn’t move, but Rhy shot him a small smile over one shoulder and mouthed _ keep talking. _

“They’re certifiable. They go through my shit when I’m not home, but insist I can go through theirs, so it’s equal. They try to get everyone I date alone and they’ve scared nearly all of them away. If it were up to Athos you would literally_ never _ wear a shirt, or probably any other clothes, when you come to my place. I wouldn’t put it past either of them to _ sleep with you _ if you’d let them, just to feel closer to me. Just because they voted me in, and according to them that means we _ share things _and by the way, don’t ever ask me about their significant others because I try really hard not to know about them.”

“I want to meet these people,” Cora said in a breathless, half-excited half-disgusted whisper.

“No, you don’t,” Rhy said, and then paused. “You know what, _ you _ probably do. I get the feeling you’d _ love _Astrid.”

Kell turned slowly around to look at him, his blue eyes glittering, and Holland felt a long-simmering rage fighting to find its way to the surface. He was not a violent person, but right now, he could have happily punched Kell’s dad right across his fucking jaw for making Kell’s face look like that.

Although Maxim probably wouldn’t have described himself as Kell’s father at all.

_ Ask him. Even if he says no, he’ll know someone cared enough about him, - not Rhy but _ him _ \- to ask. _

“But when Dad proposed to Marjori, they were _ so happy, _ not just because of their mom but because they wanted me to be a part of their family _ . _ They told me they’d always _ wanted _ another brother. When they voted me in, it was _ unanimous _. When Marjori and Dad got married, Astrid told me that they would always look out for me, because even if I kept my name, I was a Dane as far as they were concerned.”

“Why would you take another name?” Rhy asked, confused.

“Dad changed his name to Dane,” Holland said with a shrug. “If you ever meet Marjori you’ll see why.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kell asked, but his hands had dropped back down from his face, and some of the look of something about to break had gone from his face, and Holland took a deep breath, stepping closer.

“When I ran out of money for school, they asked me to move in with them rent-free and Marjori wrote me a check for the last semester. When I needed to take out loans for grad school, selling that land wasn’t Marjori’s idea, it was _ theirs. _ That land was supposed to be theirs when she died, and they asked her to give that money to me. She only split it equally because Marjori didn’t want to play favorites. _ ” _

“Holy shit,” Rhy said softly. “Luc and I hang out with them all the time and they’ve never mentioned that.”

“When I needed a car, they bought me one with the proceeds from their last album.” Holland did not mention the GPS tracker he’d found stuck on the underside of the dash and removed. He stepped up to Kell, putting a hand up against his face. “When this guy I’d been talking to about school bullshit for literal _ months _ asked me out, Astrid helped me choose my outfit.” He didn’t mention the way she’d brought up the potential for a threesome at least four times during the getting-dressed process. “When I was scared I’d blown it and you wouldn’t want to see me again after the first one, Athos took me out drinking and told me to give you time.” And also mentioned threesomes, now that he thought about it. “When I came home a few months later and told Astrid that that same guy had bought me a book, she told Athos, and he bought me the most expensive bottle of champagne he could find at the liquor store to celebrate. He set fire to at least three things in our backyard. The _ cops _ came. _ ” _Holland frowned. “Again.”

“Holland-”

“Listen, I have a point, I promise. What I’m trying to say is, uh… my roommates - my brother and my sister - are literal fucking _ psychos _, and I have a better home life than you do. That’s bullshit, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to do what they say. You deserve a better way to live.”

“Damn straight,” Rhy said, holding up his glass. “I’ll toast to that.”

“So what,” Kell said miserably. “The contract-”

“Is just a symbol of abuse,” Holland said softly. “They’re controlling you. They tell you where you can go and who you can live with and what you can _ learn _ and made you sign paper saying you’d change your _ job _ and never travel or go anywhere, ever, just so their golden child gets everything he wants - no offense, Rhy, I know you don’t want them to. That is _ abuse. _”

There was a silence, as Rhy and Kell both stared at him, blue eyes and dark brown totally focused on his face.

“Fucking _ thank you, _” Cora said from behind him. “Someone finally gets it!” Holland felt himself redden, but took a deep breath to steady himself. 

“It’s not abuse, I’m a grown adult,” Kell said, but his voice had gone a little faint.

“Abuse doesn’t stop when you turn eighteen,” Holland said softly. 

“Oh my God,” Rhy said out loud, and his face was ash-pale. “Oh my God, it _ is _ abuse. It’s been _ abuse the whole goddamn time. _”

“My therapist-”

“Your therapist tells Maxim Maresh everything you say to her,” Holland said quietly. “That is abuse, too, and it’s _ illegal. _You could get her practice shut down for doing that, do you understand? You shouldn’t live like this, Kell.”

“Goddamn. Fucking._ Thank. You. _ ” Cora’s phone went off and she picked it up. “Hey, baby boy, I thought we wouldn’t see you today! I miss you.” There was a pause. “Wait, really? With _ who? _”

“It’s been abuse the whole time,” Rhy repeated in a numb, surprised voice, and took a very long drink from the third bottle of champagne, a new rage glittering in his eyes. “I never realized it, I just thought-”

“It’s okay, Rhy,” Kell said. Holland slid arms around him and Kell leaned his head foreward, having to slouch a little to rest his head on Holland’s shoulder. “We should go,” He said into Holland’s neck. “I need to get out of here.”

Rhy, gripping the champagne bottle by the neck, simply walked right back out the door into the reception area. 

“Wait, Rhy! Wait! Shit. Hey, you better get in here, things are about to get crazy-” Cora said into her phone, hung up, and went racing after Rhy with her skirt hitched up in both hands. “Rhy, come back, there’s something you should know!”

“Oh no,” Kell said. “Oh he’s going to be stupid. Come on, Holland.” He grabbed Holland by his hand and went after them, and the moment was gone and Holland cursed himself. He should have asked, he should have asked when he’d had the moment open.

They came back out into the reception hall just as Rhy stomped up to his parents’ table, his eyes blazing, people at other tables turning to look.

“Rhy?” Emira looked up, startled, one hand up at her throat to grab onto a thin gold chain she wore there. “What’s wrong, darling?”

“It’s been _ abuse the whole time! _ ” Rhy shouted at the top of his lungs, his deep voice carrying over the music. “You’ve been _ abusing him his whole fucking life! _”

“Oh God, no,” Kell said, and Holland caught him as he stumbled. “Rhy, no, stop it!” He grabbed his brother by the arm but Rhy shook him out, still glaring at his parents.

“I can’t believe I never realized that’s what it was! He’s just something for you to _ control! _ So am I! Are we even _ people, _Mom, or just fucking pawns to you?!”

There were at least two hundred people in this giant room and all of them were slowly turning to look. Holland saw at least three cell phones filming, and that was just the people who weren’t even trying to hide it.

“Rhy, sit down,” Maxim said, standing slowly up, eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about and you will not ruin Col Taskon’s wedding with this nonsense. Are you _ drunk? _”

Cora Taskon went racing right past him towards the door, her phone in hand, yelling something into it that Holland couldn’t quite hear. 

“Of _ course I’m drunk, _I never want to be anything else when Kell is here because of the way you treat him!”

“We treat him just like one of our own, dear,” Emira said, her voice shaking, the tears welling up. “Please don’t make a scene.” Holland stared around at the crowd that was watching them, and if this had been a movie, the music would have cut off dramatically right about now. 

Thank God, it didn’t, and he didn’t know exactly how many people could even hear them.

“Rhy, you have to stop,” Kell said, pulling on his arm again. “This isn’t a good idea!”

“Oh, did _ you _put him up to this?” Maxim asked, turning his glare on Kell. Holland swallowed, stepping up beside him, glaring right back, but then Rhy simply stood between them, breaking Maxim’s eye contact with Kell entirely. 

“Don’t you try to blame this on him,” Rhy said, his voice so deep with rage that he sounded more like his father than himself. “Don’t you _ dare. _ You don’t get to look at him like it’s his fault anymore.” Holland wondered how many times Rhy had physically stood between Kell and his parents and never even noticed he was doing it. “Kell didn’t put me up to _ anything _. You know why I’m drunk and pissed off today?”

“Sit. Down.” Maxim’s eyes were on the crowd around them, not his shouting son, not Kell, just the crowd. Gauging the damage, Holland thought, trying to figure out if he could salvage anything from this. He felt his stomach flip, a little, and was suddenly so grateful the Danes didn’t give a shit what anyone thought, ever.

“I’m pissed off because you treat Kell like shit and you always have!” Rhy stepped up to his father, who was only a little taller than he was, and Holland kept a hand on Kell’s arm, who was only staring now, frozen, his face bright red high in the cheekbones and greenish-pale everywhere else. “You won’t let him go anywhere or do anything because of me and it makes me fucking _ furious! _ You-... you make me _ complicit in it! _ If it were up to me he’d go anywhere, but you make it all about me, you make his whole life about _ me! _ I can handle my life just fine, I don’t need Kell to make himself… _ smaller _ for me! I don’t need him to be _ less of a person _ so I can be _ more! _”

“Rhy, darling, please stop-”

“No, Mom. Not this time. You know what else pisses me off? Your fucking _ reputation. _ So I’m going to ruin it, right here, right now.” Rhy stared out into the crowd, and shouted, “You all want to know about Maxim and Emira Maresh? You want to _ know? _ Kell was adopted as a _ publicity stunt _ when Dad’s VP embezzled to get us better PR! Mom wanted to send him back when the news died down and the only reason she didn’t is because _ I begged her not to! _”

“Oh my God,” Kell said out loud. “Rhy. Oh God, Rhy, no. Oh my god. Rhy, _ please! _” His knees buckled and if Holland hadn’t had him by one arm, he’d have fallen to the floor. “This is a nightmare. This is a fucking nightmare.”

“Did you _ know that? _” Holland asked.

“Yes,” Kell said, nodding a little, his voice faint. “I heard them.”

“Maxim?” Corbin Taskon stepped up to Maxim’s side, putting a hand on his shoulder. “This is causing an unacceptable disturbance at my son’s wedding. Your boys should leave. We’ll speak later.”

“Agreed,” Maxim said. “My apologies for the… scene.”

“Oh, Cora’s made plenty of scenes of her own,” Corbin said, patting Maxim on the back.

Maxim nodded, narrowed eyes back on Kell and Rhy. “Trust that it will be dealt with. Boys. Out. _ Now. _”

“Fuck you,” Rhy spat. “I have been smiling and smiling and smiling for twenty-two years and I am fucking _ tired of smiling. _ Kell isn’t a foster kid, he’s my _ brother. _ I’m not _ slumming it _ with Luc, he’s my _ boyfriend and I am goddamn in love with him. _Kell deserves better than you’ve ever given him and I hate that I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make up to him the last nineteen years of his!”

Emira started to cry, her face in her hands, and Kell jerked away from Holland’s grip and went to her. “Emira, I’m sorry,” Kell said, pleadingly, and Holland had never been as angry in his life as he was right now, watching Kell go to someone who treated him this badly and apologize for the crime of letting other people notice it. “Don’t cry, I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have done this-”

“No,” Emira wailed. “You shouldn’t have! What did you _ say _to him, Kell?!”

“Don’t tell her not to cry!” Rhy_ thumped _ the now-empty bottle of champagne down on the table, turning his glare on Maxim one more time. Holland, disbelieving, watched Maxim take a step back from him. “She _ should _ cry! Come on, Kell, we’re going. Holland, I’m sorry this is how you met my parents, but now you know _ exactly _what they’re like.” Rhy grabbed Kell by the arm as he passed them and Kell went without protest, looking miserably guilty. Holland followed them without saying a word to Maxim or Emira, wondering how you came back from something like this, as a family.

He didn’t know. He’d never had a family fight like this before. 

And he still hadn’t asked Kell the question, and now he didn’t know if he could.

The music shut off abruptly, and Holland looked up.

“Oh, no,” He heard Maxim from behind him.

“His _ friends are here, _” Emira said, her voice shaking with anger or anxiety, Holland couldn’t tell and frankly didn’t care.

Cora Taskon, in her beautiful pink silk bridesmaid dress, stood at the edge of the dance floor where the tables began, hands on her hips, with a somewhat terrifying smile of triumphant victory on her face. 

Standing just behind her, flanking her on either side, were Astrid and Athos Dane in matching black tank tops and ripped black jeans, smiling like demons set loose on Earth. 

Astrid's tank top had BRIDE spelled out with rhinestones across the front, while Athos had glued a bunch of fake cheap craft crystals to his that spelled out MARRY HER, MARRY ME TOO.

Lila Bard was behind the DJ’s table, and was the reason the music had turned off. She was wearing her black lipstick and the DJ was standing behind her looking terrified of her.

“What the fuck are _ you doing here?” _ Holland asked, but honestly he’d never been so glad to see them in his life. If the Danes were here, tense family fights were about to stop, and everyone could band together to keep them from committing whatever crime they clearly had in mind.

“We’re moral support,” Astrid said brightly. 

“For _ somebody’s _ morals, anyway,” Athos shrugged. 

“We’re here to help,” They said in unison. 

“Luc asked us to come with him.” Astrid stepped slightly out and around to the side, and so did Athos, at the exact same moment. When they did twin-shit like this, it was eerie, and Holland could see the people at the nearest tables leaning away, trying to put space between themselves and the Danes. 

“So here we are.” Athos laughed. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to make off with some wedding presents.”

“Resale value isn’t great, but hey, maybe I need a new toaster oven, you know?” Astrid smiled. “I _ love toasting things. _”

“Luc asked you to come here?” Rhy asked, blinking. “He asked you to come with him? But where is-”

“Right here, Rhy-Guy.” 

Just walking in through the door was Alucard Emery in a deep navy blue suit that set off every bit of his warm brown skin, his hair a tumble of curls around his face, his eyebrow ring catching the light. “Sorry I’m late,” He said to Rhy with a rakish smile. “Had to get drunk enough for Lila to talk me into doing this today first.”

“Always here to help!” Lila shouted from the DJ’s table, holding the DJ off with a butter knife she wielded like a sword.

“Luc!” Rhy dropped Kell’s arm and ran to him, and Holland fought against the surreal sense that he had walked into a movie again. “What the fuck are you _ doing here? _”

There was a murmur from the crowd, and Holland could hear Corbin Taskon trying to get their attention, but the murmur was a little too loud to hear what he said. 

“He’s showing up on time to stop you from ruining my brother’s wedding,” Cora said brightly. “But also showing up right on time to ruin it a different way. This is my wildest dreams come true, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to live through something exactly like this.”

“Alucard,” Maxim said from somewhere behind them, but no one was looking at him any longer. 

“What is he _ doing here? _” Emira asked, her voice a glass dropped on the ground. Kell moved as though he would turn around but Holland didn’t let go of his arm this time.

“Making you comfort her every time you try to live your own life is abuse, too,” He said softly, and Kell slumped against him. He pressed a kiss into that red hair, not caring about the crowd, about any of it. 

“I saved your place name,” Rhy said softly when he got to Luc, pulling it out of his pocket. “See? Your name looks awesome written out in cursive like that.”

“Hey, _ Dracula Backwards _, get me out of here,” Kell said out loud in a strangled voice. “Please.”

“Wait a sec, Kell,” Luc said, but his voice was gentle. Holland blinked; he’d never heard Luc and Kell speak to each other with anything but insults and hard edges before. “I have something I need to do first.”

Cora’s smile could have put the sun to shame in its brightness as Luc went down on one knee on the floor, pulling a small box out of his pocket.

“No,” Emira said from behind him, her voice thick with tears and embarrassment.

“Yes!” Rhy yelled immediately.

“I haven’t asked yet,” Luc said, laughing up at him. “At least let me _ ask! _ Jesus God, Rhy, let me ask you if you’ll marry me first!”

“That counts! That counts as asking! I will! I said yes!” 

“Oh my God,” Kell said out loud, in a totally different voice. “I’m going to be stuck with him for the rest of my life.”

Cora Taskon threw both hands in the air like someone who had just run a marathon. “I did it! I officially ruined Col’s wedding! Today could_ not _be better for me!”

Holland took a deep breath, turned to look Kell right in the eyes, and said all at once, “Move in with me.”

Kell stared at him. “What?”

“Fuck your _ contract. _ We can do this together, give that bastard back his money and move in with _ me. _We’ll get somewhere to live, just us. I’ve been trying to ask you to move in with me for two months.”

“I… move… move in with you?”

Rhy and Luc were kissing with a fervor and passion that was probably a little illegal, but Rhy broke free long enough to say breathlessly, “You’ll probably want to get out of my apartment soon anyway!”

“We need to _ talk about decisions like this _!” Maxim said loudly.

“Hey, wait,” Astrid said, frowning. “What about us?”

“What _ about us, _Holland? You have to let us vote first, if he’s going to be part of the family.”

“We need to take a _ vote, _Holland.”

“We'll vote later,” Holland said without looking back at them. “I know you like him and you'll vote yes, anyway. Kell, please, answer me. It’s okay to say no, if you don’t want to. It’s okay to say no to me. I’m never going to be mad at you for not wanting something, okay? You get to make your own decisions with me.”

Kell was still blinking, looking like he was about to fall over, then he reached out and grabbed onto Holland’s hands with both of his, and Holland could feel they were shaking. He squeezed Kell’s fingers, just once, and felt him tighten his grip, too.

“Is it okay if I kiss you right now?” He asked, hesitantly, and Holland smiled.

“Kell,” He said gently. “You have never once had to ask first.”

Kell pulled him close, and Cora Taskon looked like the happiest ringleader who ever stood in a circus tent, crossing her arms in front of herself, watching the show.

Her brother stomped up beside her, his angry bride beside him, and Cora smiled, serene and peaceful. “And _ this, _ ” She said to Col in her sweetest voice, “is for proposing to Jennifer in the middle of my high school graduation party, motherfucker.” 

She swanned away, Col sputtering in fury after her, the poor bride left staring after them. Holland wondered if she was rethinking all those vows she’d just taken.

Astrid watched Cora leave, one eyebrow raised. “Oh, I want to know _ her, _” She said, and she and Athos drifted in that direction, two wolves that had just found another wolf to create a pack with.

“Boys-” Emira said, putting a hand on Kell’s arm.

Kell pulled away from her. “We’re leaving,” He said without looking in her direction. “I’ll call you later.”

He pulled Holland by the hand as they walked back outside, Rhy and Luc just behind them, Lila trailing at the back and grabbing handfuls of Jordan almonds from the bowls set out on the tables on her way. 

Kell pulled out his phone and Holland blinked. “Who are you even calling?”

“My therapist,” Kell said. “I’m going to leave a voicemail telling her to go fuck herself. So where are we going to live?”

His free hand found Holland’s, and the two of them held tight as they walked down the lane and headed for Holland’s car.

Rhy jumped on Luc’s back and Luc carried him piggyback-style, while Rhy held his hand up, admiring the silver band. “I love you, Alucard Emery,” He said. “I love you.”

“Yeah, I love you too, Luc grunted. “But you are not as light as you think you are.”

“Too bad, I’m too overcome with emotion to walk, you’ll have to carry me to the car anyway!”

“Hm.” Luc stopped, shifting Rhy around a little bit, and Rhy threw his arms around his neck to keep himself from falling backwards to the ground, the two of them laughing. “What do I get to do to you when we get there?”

There was a pause, and Holland heard Rhy say softly, “I’m open to negotiations, but I get to call you ‘my soon-to-be husband’ the whole time, right?”

"Too unwieldy," Luc said thoughtfully. "Why don't you just call me 'smooth motherfucker'?"

“I found a place in midtown,” Holland said, trying to drown the sickly-sweetness out. He wondered vaguely where the Danes had gone and decided it was probably better if he had plausible deniability and an alibi where he didn’t know. “If you like it, I’ll get it.”

“Where’d you get the money?”

Holland smiled. “I met your parents today,” He said softly. “How would you like to meet mine?”


	27. Something to Live For (Prompt: Celebration)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final Dark! Alternate Universe piece. Takes place after the birth of Rhy and Astrid's babies.

The blunted practice swords still hurt when you took one to the ribs, and Kell was breathing hard, pouring sweat, as he just barely avoided a second blow. He backed up away from Holland, not quite going over the red painted line that would give Holland this round, but nearly so. 

Holland smiled slowly at him, backing carefully up. They were both shirtless by now, and Holland’s mark from Athos was visible over his heart, where Kell’s never _ wasn’t _in plain view on the side of his face. “Do you yield?” He asked, and his voice was low, with the hint of Maktahn accent softening the consonants, drawing out the vowels. His black hair was plastered to his forehead and the sweat on him made his skin shine, just a little, in the slightly dim light from the lamps that lined the walls. “Do you yield to me?”

“Not just yet,” Kell said, breathlessly, trying to shake his own sweat-soaked red hair out of his eyes. "I've still got some fight left for you."

The training ring was the only place any of this was all right, the only place he felt like his life was in his control. It was the place where he could be furious without hurting Rhy or risking punishment from Astrid. Once he left this room, he played the part Rhy needed him to play, and he was there for his brother, just as he had always been.

Outside of this room, Kell was the dutiful servant of the crown, the tame _ Antari _ who announced the queen and king each night and who went to Athos when he was called and kept his face a blank and boring mask. Outside, he was the doting uncle who loved his niece and nephew. Outside of this room, he was cowed, bent, broken into whatever shape they wanted, as long as it made Rhy’s life a little easier.

Outside of this room, _ Holland _ rarely spoke unless directly spoken to. He moved through Arnes as a silent, unobtrusive presence. He went from here to Makt like a ghost all in black. He barely touched Kell, and then only when he had to. Outside of this room, Holland was the first _ Antari _, serving with devotion carved on his skin. 

Outside of this room, he and Holland walked at least three feet apart, circled each other and kept their distance. They barely even spoke, although Kell felt Holland’s eyes on him when he was turned away, and found himself staring back when Holland looked elsewhere, too. The distance was not a facade, not exactly, but a way for the two men to have just one thing, in their entire lives, that they could keep for themselves.

The training room was barred against anyone else who might try to enter it. This was the Antari training space, just for the two of them, and Lila never bothered with it. This room was theirs and theirs alone.

In here, they were bitter when needed, and angry, and anything else they chose to be. Right now, Kell was choosing to be a mix of nervous over the gala tonight, angry that he would have to fake happiness at the official introduction of the new prince and princess of Arnes to the court, and also deeply interested in a droplet of sweat running over Holland’s collarbone and slowly down the left side of his chest.

It ran over Holland's mark, disappearing somewhere into it.

“Good,” Holland said. He lifted his sword back up in a challenge. His voice dropped low as he added, “You know it disappoints me when you yield to me too soon.”

“Don’t worry,” Kell said in a snarl. “I’ll make you work for it.” He attacked quickly, but Holland blocked it, and he managed to spin away this time before that blunt blade could crash into any part of him again. He and Holland were both smiling at each other, baring teeth, as their blades met with the awful clunk of metal on metal.

Outside of this room, Holland never smiled. Inside, Kell had discovered a part of Holland was always ready to enjoy certain types of violence.

He thought he saw an opening and went for it, but Holland caught him out, and blocked again. The heavy practice blades clanged together and the feeling rattled up his arm, shaking bones, loosening his grip. “You’re wearing out, Maresh,” Holland murmured. 

Kell growled and attacked again. 

He sometimes won against Holland, but it wasn’t as often as he would like.

Kell had put on solid muscle since Astrid had taken over, the hours he spent trying to train himself for a battle he would likely never have a chance to fight building and layering his body into something that looked very different than it had a year and a half ago, when _ she _ was threatening him with his brother’s face and he'd only barely escaped her.

Then he had fallen for Lila’s ruse of being on his side, and let she and Holland fool him together. He'd forgiven Holland - none of it had been his choice.

But Lila had chosen to lie to him, go to bed with him, and attack him once he trusted her all on her own.

No, Kell was pure lean muscle now, and compared to Holland’s slightly bulkier frame, he had the speed and agility. But Holland had endurance.

Finally, Kell lunged at the wrong moment, run too ragged by Holland simply allowing him to tire himself out with time, and Holland slammed his training sword right into Kell’s hand, knocking his sword to the ground with a clatter. “Shit!” He threw his hand up to defend himself, but Holland laughed.

He grabbed Kell by the wrist, spun him around, and pulled him back until his back was to the other_ Antari’ _s chest, the blunt sword against his throat, pushing his chin up.

He could feel Holland’s chest moving up and down, hear him breathing in his ear. “Do you yield?” Holland asked, softly. "Do you yield to me now?"

“I yield, _ Antari. _"

“Hm.” Holland pushed the sword a little harder against his throat, and Kell’s head was forced to tilt back until his hair brushed Holland’s shoulder. “I don’t believe you.”

“I yield _ utterly _,” Kell said, in a voice that was a little deeper than it had been a moment ago, a little hoarse.

“Not good enough yet.”

Kell laughed, bitterly. “Should I _ kneel _ to you, too, _ Antari? _ Saints know I kneel to enough people these days, might as well add one more. _ ” _

Holland shrugged, without lowering his sword so much as an inch. “You know kneeling is never a requirement with me. Turn your head to the side.”

Kell smiled and tilted his head as he turned it to the right, exposing the side of his neck. When Holland lowered his mouth to it, he tensed, just slightly, waiting.

“Do you yield to me?” Holland asked, lips brushing his skin, just slightly. 

Kell swallowed, hard. “I yield to you, Holland.”

“Good,” Holland murmured, and lowered his mouth onto Kell’s neck.

At first it was gentle, a kiss, and then he felt the graze of his teeth and Kell tensed just as Holland bit, and pain lit up every nerve, making Kell cry out and fall back against him, Holland sliding an arm around his stomach to hold him up. 

“What do you yield?” Holland asked in a whisper, and sucked on the skin. He’d drawn blood, and the magic between them drew out, a hint of black veins around Holland’s eyes that would have faded by the time they were done. 

“Ah… anything,” Kell said softly, and Holland let his own sword drop to the floor, biting down on his neck again, harder this time. Kell’s answering cry no doubt reached the Mindless that guarded the other side of the door. If they even had ears at all. 

Kell did not win these fights as often as he would like, but he had learned, some of the times they came down here, that he could drink blood, too. 

Outside of this room, they barely talked, they did not touch, they did not acknowledge each other unless they had to. Outside of this room, in just an hour or so, they’d have to go get dressed for the celebration tonight, put on their masks, and be Astrid’s perfect pet_ Antar _i, unable to so much as lift a finger without her express approval and consent.

Outside of this room, Kell was nothing but a slave and Holland little more. Outside of this room, they were no one, and nothing to each other.

Inside this room, they were more.

Holland’s hand slid up over his face, and when he kissed Kell his lips tasted like blood. “Yield to me,” Holland said softly. 

"I do.” Kell moved as if to turn but Holland’s hand held him still right where he was, and he groaned as that mouth went back to his neck again.

“Give me _ everything _.” Holland bit again, in the same place, the mix of pain and far more than pain a confusing mess that scattered the shadows in Kell’s mind and chased away his knowledge of how much his life had spiralled away from him.

“Everything,” he said softly, and when Holland’s thumb trailed across his mouth, he let his own teeth close around the slightly calloused skin, feeling more than hearing Holland’s quick intake of breath.

Outside of this room, he had made the mistake of putting his trust in a pretty girl with sharp edges - and he had lost a war, lost a country, lost his adoptive parents, nearly lost his brother, and in the end he had lost his most basic freedom. 

Inside this room, he had _ gained _ Holland Vosijk. 

They gave their pain to each other, and left the room a little stronger than they had entered it.

* * *

Lila had her back to him, and Kell stared at it, wishing he could have buried a knife to the hilt right through her heart. She wrapped her hands around the bedpost, leaned over until her nose just touched it, and then said, “Okay, do it.”

Her dress was mostly on, but the back laces were still undone, and he stared at her. He, Astrid, Holland, and Lila were the only people in this room right now. Luc and Rhy had taken the twins down the hall to Luc’s room, to look out his windows at the ocean.

Astrid may have let Luc out of prison, but she had made sure his windows faced the ocean he would never sail again.

Lucius and Livia were being presented tonight, their introduction to royal life at six months of age, and with Astrid’s window open he could _ hear _the crowds beginning to arrive. 

“Well, Kell?” Astrid said, running cold fingers across the back of his neck. He stiffened immediately at her touch, wondering if she knew that Holland liked to touch him there, down in the training room, liked to grab him by the back of the neck and push his head down-

“Well what?” He asked, and then winced, realizing too late he’d said it out loud and not just in his head.

Astrid snorted, grabbing him by the back of his hair and jerking his head back until he nearly fell over, trying to bring him down to her level. Astrid barely reached his chin, but with the mark on his face, she loomed outsized inside his mind. “I am kind to your brother because he gave me my children,” Astrid hissed right into his ear when she had pulled him down far enough. “Do not mistake that kindness for weakness. Lace my beautiful Lila up. You’ve laced her back up before, after all, haven’t you?”

Kell felt his face redden. He’d only realized later the necklace Lila always wore was a charm so Astrid could eavesdrop through her. He’d only realized after he’d lost, when she’d dangled it above his head where they had him kneeling on the floor and told him Astrid had heard every sound he made.

Inside the training room, he and Holland were free, at least with each other. Outside of it, his life was a series of reminders that he had lost that freedom through his own naïve stupidity.

The mark in his face burned and he didn’t know if it was the magic settling in to the order of just him blushing at the memory of Astrid laughing at the things he had said to Lila in bed. He swallowed, hard, and moved towards her. She kept her back to him, but he could see the hint of a smile on her face.

Against the wall behind him, Holland stood like a statue, arms crossed in front of himself, watching.

Inside the training room, they spoke. Outside the training room, he and Holland only watched each other.

“Put your strength into it this time,” Lila said over her shoulder, and he hated the sound of her voice, hated it as much as he’d once longed to hear it again. Astrid was still just behind him, the cold in the air around her an eternal thing, and he felt his hands shake just slightly as he took the laces in hand. “Last time I could barely keep it on, you laced me so loose.”

“I was distracted at the time,” He said through gritted teeth, and yanked hard on the laces. She jerked slightly, and laughed out loud. He heard Astrid’s low chuckle behind him. 

He tried to hurry, but Astrid made him take his time, and he laced her up as tightly as he could. Each jerk on the laces made her catch her breath a little bit more, and he tried not to think about how she had made the same sounds when he’d laced her up the one and only time they’d slept together. Then, of course, he hadn’t had Astrid watching him. 

He hadn’t had Holland watching him.

He tried to think about that instead, but all he could see was Lila’s sharp smile, her hands around his neck pulling him close. 

He jerked hard on the lacing right at the top of her rib cage and was gratified to see her grip on the bedpost loosen briefly. “Shit! Kell, not so hard.”

“You said to put my back into it,” He hissed at her. “So here you go, Lila Bard.” He jerked the laces as hard as he physically could and she actually stumbled back this time, and he felt himself smile.

“Ah, puppy,” Astrid said gently, trailing a fingertip along the mark on the side of his face. “Gentle, now. You were so gentle with her once, you know. But then, you didn’t know at the time that she didn’t like gentle. Or… you.”

Holland made a sound in his throat, somewhere behind him, something subtle and soft but Kell heard it and took a deep breath, calming himself down. When he did up the last few laces, he was careful, and gentle, and he thought about the feeling of Holland’s eyes on his back and how those eyes felt looking right into his, down in the room where he didn’t have to be broken.

When he was done, Lila turned to look at him, hands on her hips, sharp-eyed and calculating as always. “Nice job,” She said grudgingly. “That was hard enough that I’d almost consider taking you to bed again.”

“I’d die first,” Kell snapped, and then felt Astrid’s hand on his shoulder and froze.

“You would do exactly what I told you to do,” She said smoothly, and he hated her voice, the low Maktahn accent that he loved in Holland was hateful when it came from her. “Wouldn’t you?”

He closed his eyes and nodded, slowly. 

“Good puppy. Lucky for you I’d rather fuck her myself than let you do it. Now go find your brother.” Astrid flickered a dismissive glance in Holland’s direction. “Lila and I need to finish getting ourselves ready.”

Kell swallowed back his hate and his pain and the guilt that all of this was because of him and left the room as ordered, Holland falling into line behind him. They were dressed for the gala, Kell in the red of a dead king and queen he had failed and Holland in his usual, eternal black.

He wondered if Holland wore black out of mourning for his own losses, but he'd never felt able to ask.

* * *

By the time they made it to Luc’s set of rooms, in the hallway Astrid had set aside as a kind of sanctuary for Rhy to spend with the people she allowed to be near to him, Kell’s shoulders had stopped being up near his chin from tension.

He had forced himself, with each step, to relax a muscle. By the time he opened Luc’s door, he gave to Rhy the image his brother needed to stay sane; relaxed and content or at least learning to accept his lot in life. 

Luc was holding Lucius up to a wind chime he’d hung by the window, watching the tiny boy bat at it with his hands and laughing when he got one and set it to chiming. 

Lucius looked like a Dane, really, with his thinner hair straight as a bone and pale skin. At least his hair was black, if nothing else. 

Rhy was dancing slowly around the room holding Livia, her head resting on his shoulder, eyes closed. Livia looked like Rhy, all dark curls and skin and a mouth that seemed always ready for a smile. The shape of her face was like Emira's, but he could see Rhy and Maxim in it, too, hardly any Dane at all. Rhy looked up at Kell when he entered and smiled, putting one finger to his lips, continuing to sway in the slow back-and-forth rhythm that seemed to come to him naturally from the moment Astrid had handed him his newborn children and told him to say hello.

Kell might have hated to admit it, but Rhy loved being a father. He loved it, and even more surprisingly, Luc seemed to love acting as a kind of uncle-slash-nanny. He saw beyond where they had come from and their circumstances, and Astrid had begun to trust him, bit by bit, with her children. 

Kell had days he could not bear the sight of them, living reminders of what he had lost, looking at him with two identical sets of Dane-blue eyes. But there were other days he could not bear to look away. 

Rhy let his head drop, just a little, resting his chin on top of his daughter’s head. Kell watched him close his dark eyes a little, still dancing to a rhythm only he could feel, as Livia slept contentedly against his shoulder.

Rhy could live with this, Kell thought, because Rhy had something to live for. 

Well, so did Kell. 

He felt Holland’s hand on his shoulder, briefly, before the other Antari walked away to take his place up against the wall, arms crossed in front of himself.

Kell watched Rhy for a long time in silence, until he felt other eyes on him and realized the wind chimes had gone silent. When he looked away from Rhy, he saw Luc was watching, too, smiling a little, as Lucius babbled and clapped his hands together. Luc murmured, "Ssshhhh, baby boy, your sister is sleeping." Lucius leaned back to look up into Luc's smiling warm eyes and batted at his face.

Luc smiled, and looked back at Rhy, and he and Kell met eyes, briefly.

Rhy could live for his children.

Kell and Luc, at least, were living for Rhy.

Rhy began to hum under his breath, a lullaby Kell vaguely remembered Emira singing to him when he had first come to live with them, and he moved around the room silently, not wanting to disturb the moment. 

Inside the training room, he was bitterness and anger, he and Holland gave each other their pain and frustration and anguish over the losses they had suffered. They left the training room touching fingers, just slightly, until they crossed the threshold and let them drop.

Kell took Lucius from Luc, who handed him over with a smile and a mouthed _ thank you. _Kell did not smile back; there was only so much pretending he could do. But he held Lucius in his arms, the baby’s warmth and weight settling easily against his shoulder, and took him over to the balcony to look at the ocean and point at the sails of the ships.

In a little while, they would go down to the throne room where the babies would be presented, the prince and princess of Arnes, Dane twins with a mother who had ruined Kell’s entire life and a father who he had rebuilt the remnants around. They would be surrounded by hundreds of people celebrating the most visible symbol of Kell's failure to protect his brother from Astrid Dane's machinations.

Staring from the rooms, he could almost see the ocean past the tops of all the buildings. He could see the sails of the ships, including the _ Night Spire, _which Luc would never set foot on again. He could see to the curve of the horizon, and the glow of the Isle below where it wound through the city, setting the world alight with magic.

He turned to look back into the room, and saw Luc move up to Rhy, touching his face briefly. Rhy opened his eyes, smiling, and when Luc moved to him he slid his free arm around his waist, Luc’s arm around his shoulder, and the two men began to dance, Rhy still humming the softest lullaby, with Livia held between them.

He looked back at the ocean, and after a while he felt more than heard Holland move up beside him, staying carefully in the shadows and out of the warm Arnesian sun. 

“I can do this,” He said softly, whether to himself or to Holland, he did not know.

Tonight they would attend a celebration for two children he had hated even the idea of, right up until he had met them and seen their tiny Rhy faces and realized he loved them with every fiber of who he was, simply because they were his brother's children, and that was enough.

“You can,” Holland said quietly. 

He had Rhy, and he had the twins, and he could build a life on those two things. “I do,” Kell said quietly. “I have something to live for.”

As Luc and Rhy slow-danced with Livia back in Luc’s room, Holland put a hand against the small of his back. He leaned over and said softly, “So do I.”


	28. Love You So Much (Prompt: Family)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is for the prompt Family, and is the second to last of the Serial Killer Gap Year storyline. You'll have one modern AU next, then the final SKGY, then the final Modern AU, and that's it for the month! 
> 
> Referenced/implied sexual assault, outright described physical assault, etc. This is Serial Killer Gap Year: it's just a very dark place.

There was a moment when Holland realized Lila would not win this fight.

He forced himself not to look as he tried to undo the green leather cuff around Kell’s wrist one-handed, clicking his tongue ring against his teeth, bitten fingernails scrabbling to get purchase. His hand was shaking and he couldn’t seem to get it to function, and Kell was _ watching him _ with the worst kind of understanding in his eyes, blurred and unfocused and accepting.

Kell was too tired, probably still too drugged, too weak to save himself - and he knew it.

_ “Fight me,” Athos had whispered. Holland hadn’t known his name, yet, then; that was the first night. He had just been a man with a black ski mask and wide blue eyes Holland couldn’t look away from. "You'll die under me anyway, at least make it fun for me first." _

_ The first lie had been Athos telling him he wouldn’t live to morning. _

_ It had taken days before they left the house he'd shared with Ros, and when they had gone, they'd taken Holland with them. _

_ "I think I'm going to like you," Athos had said, hand against the small of his back, as he stumbled out to the unfamiliar car in the driveway, head down, fuzzy from whatever they'd given him. _

_ "You already like him," Astrid chided. "We've never left one alive before." _

_ He'd had a look on his face then almost exactly like Kell's expression now. _

“Bitch!” Lila shrieked, and there was the unmistakable sound of a fist connecting with someone’s face - probably her eye, Holland had been given so many black eyes that the sound was as familiar as the icemaker in every hotel. 

Lila must have fought back; Astrid cried out, something wordless and animal.

“Don’t hit my fucking _ sister _!” Athos snarled, and there was another, harder thump.

She wasn’t going to win - even with Astrid injured, two on one wasn’t fair - and everything he’d done had been for nothing.

He shouldn’t have tried. She shouldn’t have asked him if he needed help. He shouldn’t have signaled. He should have let Kell die.

"You're so pretty," Kell said, in the same tone you might use to speak to a frightened child. “It’s okay if you can’t. You’re so pretty.”

“Sssshhhh, please just h-h-hold on a second-” He couldn’t get the fucking thing _ open _ . He’d never had to, he’d never even _ tried. _ Athos had always been the one to take them off. _ Athos _ was the one who decided when he should be restrained. Athos and Astrid decided everything, he had never taken them off before-

“It’s okay if you can't,” Kell said again, his head falling hard to one side. “It'll be okay. I like your metal face.” 

Astrid gasped, breathing in pants that were audible, and he could hear the fear in Athos's voice when he said, almost plaintively, "Astrid?"

"Fuck her up," Astrid said with a strangely muffled voice, weak and thin. "Fuck her up and let's get out of here."

He managed to get the first one undone and Kell’s hand fell bonelessly down to his side, his whole body slumping with one arm still up in the air. “One down,” Kell whispered to him, and laughed breathlessly, a laugh that was as much tears as anything else.

_ "One down," Athos whispered in his ear, then barked an awful laughter that made him jump. He pulled against the handcuffs, but they didn’t even creak. He was blindfolded but he could hear them weeping, the people Astrid and Athos called ‘bodies’ as though they were already dead. _

_ He had cried, for a while, but Athos had licked the salt off his cheeks and that had frozen all of the rest right where they were in his eyes. "You shouldn't have said anything. Now they'll die because you did." _

_ The first time he tried to get help. They killed the people - not even the same people he had tried to signal, just other people they had found - and then they broke his hand. _

“When you g-g-get out of the v-van, r-r-ruh… run for help,” Holland said, a little desperately, knowing the words were useless, but he had to say them anyway.

Kell’s eyes lolled down towards his legs, and only with effort did he look back up. “Do I look like someone who can run right now?” The ketamine must have been wearing off, his words were less slurred together, but what ketamine wasn’t doing to him, blood loss _ was _.

“Just t-t-try.”

Behind him, he heard Lila let out a scream of fury and pain, and slumped forward himself against Kell’s shoulder, took a deep breath of the scent of blood and flower shampoo.

He looked over his shoulder to see Astrid had pulled the knife out of Lila’s shoulder and dug her fingers into the wound, forcing them in, pushing as hard as she could. Lila’s face was a broken mask of pain - Astrid’s was suddenly calm, white as snow in the darkness except for where the smears of red coated her, and she looked like a fairy-tale monster, a horror movie villain. 

“You’ll _ never take him away from my brother _ .” Astrid’s voice was a hiss, turning into something like a gurgle, thick with the blood caught in her throat. “You’ll _ never take what he loves away from him. _”

Lila screamed again and scratched at her eyes, but Astrid’s grip didn’t loosen, and Athos kicked her in the ribs. Holland heard the _ snap _ and winced - he knew that sound pretty well by now, too. A kick to the head and Lila went limp on the ground. Athos leaned over and held out a hand to help Astrid stand back up.

"Damn it, Kell…" Lila groaned, rolling on to her side and curling up. "Should've brought help…"

“W-we’ll be okay,” Holland said to Kell, who nodded slowly back to him. They wouldn’t, of course, and both of them knew it. 

He wasn't getting out of this.

_ “I’m not letting you get out of it this time. If you want to eat, you have to say it,” Astrid said patiently, watching him where he sat staring at the burger and fries she’d laid out on the little table next to the motel bed. “You haven’t eaten in three days, Holland, you _ must _ be hungry by now. Stubborn thing. What do we say? If you say it, I'll let you eat, and then we can surprise Athos when he comes back, you say it to him, too. Help me make my brother happy, it's our birthday after all." _

_ He could smell it, the fried-potato smell and the burger, and it was driving him out of his mind. _

_ Finally, he slumped over, putting his hands up over his face, and muttered, “Okay, okay. I love him. I love him. I'll ask him to do it when he gets back, I will, just please let me eat.” _

"Your eyes are green and they keep changing." Kell wasn't even looking at him, his head hung limp and his hair was soft against Holland's face. "Are you changing your eyes for me? Is it because you want to be friends?"

"How the _ fuck _ are y-you still conscious?" He finally got the second cuff undone and Kell collapsed bonelessly against him, one shoulder still stuck to the backseat of the car by the knife. Holland put a hand around it, took a deep breath, and started to pull.

Kell let out a choked-off, strangled scream of pain and Holland dropped his hand again. “Shit. Shit, I c-c-can’t hurt you, I don’t want to h-hurt you-”

“They’re going to hurt me worse,” Kell said, but there wasn’t any particular fear in his voice. There wasn’t really any feeling at all. “Aren’t they?”

"Yes," Holland said hoarsely. "They're g-going to kill y-y-you."

Kell took in a breath, let it out. Holland could hear it shake. "Okay," he said finally. "That's okay. It'll be okay."

"Athos," Astrid said behind him in a strange, guttural voice. "Help me get in the car."

He turned and nearly jumped out of his skin.

Astrid was standing _ right there. _ He hadn't heard her move but she was right at the open back of the van, her blue eyes faded but still nearly glowing in the dark. He froze, just a rabbit in the jaws of some great monster.

She was blood in his brain, the knife on his skin, the way she kissed him, and he could not move until she wanted him to.

“Do you think you will leave him?” Astrid asked, and her voice kept trailing away at the end. “Did you think I’d ever let you?” Athos was holding her up, his arm gently supporting her, looking down at her with an open love and fear that Holland could hardly stand to see. _ He’d _hurt Athos like that; this was all his fault. This was all his fault, and Athos loved him so much and he felt so guilty for it-

_ No. Stop. You’re a captive. This is not love. You’re supposed to want to be free. _

“Astrid, we should put you up front with me,” Athos said worriedly. Behind them, Lila Bard had managed to drag herself back to her feet, moving to put distance between them and pulled out a phone, frantically dialing it. 

“Just put me in the back with Holland, Athos. I need to lay down." Astrid groaned and started to cough again, an awful thick sound that shook her entire body. Holland stared in horror at the amount of blood running from her mouth, wondering how much more she could lose.

_ Good, thank God, you’ll finally die. _

_ Don’t leave me I can’t live without you. _

“Oh, Astrid,” Athos said softly. He moved with perfect gentleness to get her into the back of the van, where she slowly laid down, legs curled in the small space, staring up at the roof with her blue eyes narrowed against how much it must hurt. “Holland… help her, please.”

“Holy shit,” Kell gasped, starting to pull as if to move away and then crying out when that pulled too hard against the knife. “That’s so much blood.”

“Shut the fuck up, flower boy,” Astrid hissed at him, eyes narrowed so much you could only really see the whites. “You’re bloodying it up in here, too."

"Because of _ you. _"

Athos grabbed Holland by the arm, and when he turned, there were tears in Athos’s eyes. 

“Please,” Athos said, and his voice cracked, and all the fight in Holland fell apart at the fear in it, at the glimpse of a small boy inside the man who had destroyed him. His eyes were too wide, the white showing around them. “Please, Holland, hold on to her."

_ I wish you both were dead. _

_ I love you. _

“I will, Athos,” He said out loud, and tilted his head up just slightly for the desperate, bruising kiss, Athos's hands around his shoulders, gripped on to him. Then Athos pulled away and slammed the back door of the van shut, closing the three of them in the darkness.

"I wish I didn't have to see him kiss you before I die," Kell muttered.

"If I wasn't injured, you'd see even more," Astrid replied weakly. "Ever seen him suck dick? Man's…" She coughed weakly. "He's a champ."

"How the fuck can you talk like this _ when you are bleeding to death?" _

"How can _ you _ when my brother's going to slit your throat?"

"Astrid," Holland leaned over, watching the light fading slowly from her eyes. "You need to s-stop… and breathe, okay?"

"You're… _ so good _at it, though," Astrid whispered, and tried to laugh, but only bled more.

“I need to report a kidnapping.” He could hear Lila’s voice, muffled by closed doors and distance. She had retreated, clearly aware she couldn’t win this, not with a knife wound in one shoulder and Athos totally unharmed. “I just saw it, I just lost a fucking _ fight _ trying to stop it - _ no I will not watch my language! They’ve taken my fucking friend away in a van! _ I… no, I don't… a Ford… something?"

“Oh, dark now,” Kell mumbled, slumped against the backseat. “Goodbye Lila, I guess. And Dad. And Mom. Vanessa. Rhy... Hey, uh… guy. What’s th’ third location? Is there a name for that?”

Athos got into the front seat, turned the key in the ignition, and backed up so fast Lila had to throw herself to the side and onto the ground, still shouting into the phone, to get out of his way. 

It was… kind of nice, to know the end was in sight, now, finally in sight.

“Tertiary,” He said to Kell, digging through the bags in the back of the car, searching for the first aid kit. “It’s c-c-called the t-tuh… tertiary location.” He had to brace himself constantly against Athos’s wild turns and swerving, and heard Kell hiss whenever the movement of the van pulled on the knife. 

“H-Holland-” Astrid was watching him, her eyes glittering with inhuman focus in the dark, for all that she was white as snow where she wasn’t red and her voice was a thick, bloody whisper. “Holland- I want to tell you-”

He found the kit and pulled out the wraps of gauze, rolling it around in his hands until it would pack, and started pushing it into her wound. She groaned, grabbing at his wrist, and her grip was still ice-cold and strong.

"Don't." She squeezed his wrist until he felt the bones creak with the pressure. "I die like a Dane. Don't."

_ “I want to tell you about the frost giants,” Athos said, crawling into the tent with him. Holland looked away from him, knees to his chest, and said nothing. He hated being out here in the wilderness. He hated how much worse they were out here, where no one could hear his screaming. When they had first taken him, he thought nothing could be worse than that. _

_ He'd been wrong. _

_ "I want to tell you about where we come from. Mother always said we came from gods, but I think we’re the frost giants.” _

_ Holland closed his eyes, looking at the red behind his eyelids. His back hurt so badly he could barely move, but the things in the box in the back of the red sports car hadn't all been used yet. _

_ Athos spoke softly, but the threat in his voice was unmistakable. “Look at me, Holland.” _

_ He turned slowly, opening his eyes, and Athos’s eyes glittered in the stifling darkness of the little tent. Astrid was still out there somewhere, hunting for dinner, and for now it was only the two of them in here. _

_ “Say it,” Athos said softly, already moving to kiss him. _

_ “I love you,” Holland said numbly back. That at least was better than the hurting. "Tell me about the frost giants, please." _

_ "Danes are strong, and cold." Athos smiled at him, and Holland wanted this to be over but he wasn't strong enough to push back. "We get what we want." _

“I want to tell you-” Astrid said again, and coughed, Holland rolling her onto her side so she wouldn’t choke on it. “I never…”

“I know,” Holland said gently, keeping a hand on her arm. Behind him Kell Maresh’s breathing had gone ragged and slow, and he wondered if he was finally, mercifully, unconscious. “You never did, I know.”

“No. Listen. I never… saw him so happy. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt.”

“You need to r-r-rest, Astrid. Athos, she needs to g-go to a hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Astrid hissed, digging her fingernails into his arm. “I die like a Dane, like a warrior, tonight. You stay with him. He needs someone to help with the… with the itch, Holland. He needs someone.”

"Yes, Astrid."

“No hospitals,” Athos said up front but his voice was so heavy with tears Holland could hardly understand him. “Danes don’t die in hospitals.”

_ “What are you going to do if someone ever fights back and really hurts you?” _

_ He was painting Astrid’s toenails, marking each careful red line with the tiny brush, using his good left hand to paint. She had her feet resting on his thighs where they sat together in the hotel bed, some Hallmark movie about an ice skater playing on the TV, and she blinked at him. _

_ Holland hadn’t been much of a talker before he’d been abducted, and he was even less of one now. When he spoke without being spoken to first, both of them listened. _

_ Except when he was asking them to stop. _

_ “What do you mean, what will we do?” _

_ “If anyone ever really hurt you.” One red line and then another, layered slowly, to create a smooth and even color. He’d left a smudged spot once and after how she had reacted, he would never do that again. _

_ "We'd kill them." She shrugged, languidly, hair spilling around her like white silk. When he did not hate her, she was beautiful. _

_ Beautiful and cold, with an empty spot behind her eyes instead of a person. _

_ "But… what if you're really hurt?" _

_ She looked thoughtfully at the TV screen, where the main character was busy fighting with the obviously inferior city love interest who would lose out to the gruff, no-nonsense high school sweetheart she’d reconnected with. After a long pause, she said, “Then we die like Danes.” _

Time passed, and Holland lost it somehow. Later, he couldn’t get it back, couldn’t remember what he said or did while Athos drove in the darkness and the three of them slid around the back of the van. 

He knew that he held onto Astrid, when she wanted him to. That he laid down with her in the back of the van, her back to his chest, and kept her warm when she started to shiver. 

He knew that he listened to her breathing, pressed his fingers to the side of her neck and counted her heartbeats with her, the two of them breathing the count out loud, an echoed whisper.

Her heart was slowing down.

He knew Kell Maresh was out completely, but his chest still moved up and down when Holland was able to put a hand on it, he was still breathing.

His pulse was still strong and steady.

Holland's heart stuttered and skipped, missed beats. He was used to that, though, and too busy counting theirs to worry about his own.

The smell of blood had overtaken everything, and Holland felt sick from the smell and the rolling of the van, the way Athos swerved and sped and slammed on brakes. He felt sick, and he had no idea how much time had passed, but he knew where they were going.

The next destination had been a place Astrid wanted to see, but they had always missed somehow.

_ Athos came in the door holding a bouquet of flowers, and Holland stared. It was ostentatious, kind of disgustingly huge, and had to have cost him at least fifty dollars. _

_ "Athos, why…" _

_ "Happy birthday," Athos said, pushing it into his free arm. The other, broken hand - still swollen and bruised, he had to cover it with the fucking glove whenever they were out - was handcuffed to the bed. He'd been watching TV alone while Athos was out. He had no idea where Astrid was. "I looked at your Driver's license when we took you. Happy birthday, Holland." _

_ Holland stared down at the obnoxious array of roses crooked in his arm, then slowly back up. _ _ "You bought me _ flowers, _ Athos?" _

_ "You're our family, now, of course we did. But we did more than that." Athos opened the door. It didn't even occur to him to cry for help. The memory of the people who had died before they bashed his hand was still too clear. _

_ Astrid came in, holding a white sheet cake out in front of her with candles lit, smiling. The cake had HAPPY BDAY HOL DOLL scrawled across the top in blue icing. _

_ "Happy birthday to Holland," she and Athos started to sing, and for the first time since they had opened the front door and murdered Ros right in front of him, Holland laughed. He was trapped in a nightmare with crazy people and they had bought him a cake. _

_ Astrid leaned over the bed since he was still cuffed to it, holding the cake out so he could blow out the candles. _

_ He blew them out all at once, and he made a wish he knew by now would never come true. _

_ "Thank you," he said to the both of them, as they kissed him, one and then the other. "Thank you for my cake." _

_ Athos smiled. _

The terrain changed, subtly, and they were moving slowly downhill, Athos riding the brakes until they shook underneath his feet and Holland started to wonder if they’d give out and the whole van would just go sliding off the side of the road entirely.

That'd be one way it could end.

“I have been _ so good to you, _” Athos said in a low, deadly voice from the front, the road unspooling before them in the heavy darkness, the headlights barely cutting through the fog. Holland closed his eyes, pressing his lips together against the surge of guilt and fear, holding Astrid as her breathing slowed and slowed.

She was staring at him with her wide blue eyes, one hand gripped onto his arm. She’d stopped talking a while ago. 

Athos sighed. “We’ve been doing so well, Holland, communicating so _ well, _ you were trying so hard… Why now? Why would you do this now? Why would you try to leave me again? Why would you do this to _ Astrid? _Why would you take my sister away from me?”

_ Because Lila Bard noticed I was scared and no one ever notices anymore. Because it’s been almost three years and no one has ever asked me if I needed help. Not someone actually prepared to give it. _

_ Because I don't love you. _

_ Because I do. _

“I don’t know,” Holland said out loud, into the darkness in the back of the van. Astrid’s mouth was moving, but he couldn’t hear any sound. “I don’t know.”

He had wondered, at first, if they would hear sirens, if maybe the police would show up after Lila Bard’s 911 call. Maybe lights would start flashing behind them, and it could end that way, too. No one seemed to see them in the night, though. No one came.

_ "I wish I could love you," She whispered in his ear. She thought he was asleep, between them in the bed, after Athos had finally let him rest. He tried not to shift or give away that he was awake, keeping his eyes closed and his breathing slow and careful. _

_ He didn't pull at the cuffs that held his wrists behind his back. _

_ "I always wanted to love someone," Astrid said, sliding an arm over him, nuzzling the back of his neck. He tried not to stiffen and hiss at the ache as she pressed her lips against the still-healing new tattoo. _

_ "I wish I didn't have to love through him. I wish I loved you, too." _

_ He tried to fool her, but before long one hand found its way across his stomach and then slowly down. _

_ "Roll over, Holl-Doll. I know you're awake. I want you now." _

Time passed.

Astrid Dane died holding onto his arm in the back of the van. She never made it to the redwoods, the thing she’d wanted to see, the reason they were back in Northern California at all. One moment her grip was as hard as ever, fingernails clawing deeply into his arm until they created little red crescent moons, and then just as suddenly the fierce, furious life in those blue eyes died and she went silent and still, her grip going slack.

The back of her hand thumped, muffled, against the van's carpeted floor.

“Athos…” Holland said, staring into wide dead eyes.

_ "Your hand won't stop you from hunting if you really need to eat," Astrid said, standing beside him. He was holding her bow, and she forced him to draw with his bad hand, despite the agony that rippled through as she carefully closed his fingers, grinding the half-healed bones together until he couldn't hold back the sounds of pain. "Draw, Holland." _

_"I'm trying-"_

_"Try harder. Five shots hit the dummy and I'll show you how to lay good traps."_

_"For rabbits?" Finally, with her help, he drew the bow all the way back, and with a scream let the arrow loose._

_It thumped into the target dummy's chest, right in the center._

_"Can't live on rabbits. Not enough nutrition in the meat. You'll starve eating rabbits. Missed the heart by a bit," Astrid said approvingly. "Still a good shot, though. Now. Again."_

_She picked up another arrow, and Holland nodded, trying to brace himself as she forced his fingers to close again._

Astrid’s eyes were still wide, but there was no fear in her - only the anger, the furious empty rage, that had always been there. Holland leaned over and slowly closed them. 

“Athos, she’s-”

“I know,” Athos said, and his voice was calm and even. The calm was worse than the tears had been, and Holland wondered if Athos would pull over and get rid he and Kell right now. His shoulders slumped, staring down at Astrid’s body. “I felt her go. We have one thing left to do now.”

_ Thank God, thank God, my bad luck is over. You’re dead and he’ll kill us and this all will be over. _

_ I’m so sorry, I hate you, I love you so much, don’t leave me. _

Holland slowly leaned over, let his head rest on Astrid’s shoulder, and cried. He didn’t bother to cover it up, to try and be soft or quiet about it. He wailed three years of pain into Astrid’s skin, still warm, as though waiting for her to take another breath. He cried in horror and grief and relief and fear, because he’d fucked it all up so badly, all of it, when he could have just let what was going to happen, happen, and nothing would have changed and he would still have her and it would have been okay to suffer.

No. That was _ their _voices in his head. 

It wasn't supposed to be like this. That was what they wanted him to think, and their voices were so _loud... _only Astrid's voice wasn't anymore, was it?

There was Kell Maresh, breathing slowly, head down, and Holland thought through his tears he would have tried to save him in the end, anyway. Something about his eyes.

_ I just wanted to save one. It didn’t have to be me. I guess I never really thought it would be. _

Athos did not cry, but his driving slowed down a little, became less erratic, as though he were trying to give Holland space to do the crying for them both. 

_ "This is a test," Athos said before they went into the restaurant. _

_ He passed. _

_ "This is a test," Astrid murmured when she asked him to get ice from the ice machine. _

_ He passed. _

_ "This is a test," Athos said, ordering him to go find firewood, laughing at his fear of the things that moved in the darkness in the forest. _

_ He passed. _

_ "This is a test," Astrid said when she had him on his knees. _

_ He passed. _

_ "This is a test," they said together, one on either side of him, a nonstop chorus he couldn't shut out, before they walked into a bar in California. _

_ He failed. _

Time passed. 

He did not know how much. Eventually he stopped crying, dried his tears, and found Kell was conscious again and watching him, the same patient, blurry acceptance and understanding in his eyes. They were all of them a mess of blood by now, looking at each other like ghouls trapped in hell.

"I'm sorry," Kell said. "I'm sorry about everything." Holland thought, somehow, he kind of meant it.

When they made it to the redwoods, the giant trees rose up on either side of the road like some kind of myth, looming in the dark and then passing by, inviting them further in. No one else was here this late at night or early in the morning (which was it? Holland didn’t know anymore), and Athos took his time, driving slowly, looking around.

“You’d love this, Astrid,” He said out loud. “You’d love this so much.” He didn’t speak like he spoke to the dead; instead, his voice was casual and somewhat cheerful, as though she were still in the seat right next to him, taking in the sights. “That’s okay. I’m still bringing you here. We’re still going to end it here.”

Holland wasn’t afraid at the words.

Really, it was a relief.

When Athos slowed down and turned the van off the road, Holland braced against the backseat of the van right next to Kell, staring off into space as they bumped over the underbrush. Things scraped against the bottom of the van, the tires struggled and fought for purchase, and Athos wound with absurd slowness around the trees, going deeper and deeper into the woods.

Here, then.

It ended here.

When Athos stopped the van, finally, Holland waited patiently for the door to be opened. There was a pause, Athos moving around out there with something from the pack he kept in the front seat. 

Finally, the back doors of the van opened. Holland stared at Athos, who stood stripped to the waist in front of him, his eyes blank and empty, staring off into nothing, seeing far past Holland. “Help me carry her to the tree,” Athos said, gesturing behind him.

He’d laid a woven blanket out on the ground beneath the tree, with a small box, a hunting knife, some nails, and two hammers. Next to those was a handgun.

“Athos-”

“No. Help me move her.”

Holland climbed out, limping hard as he helped Athos move Astrid’s body, leaning her against the tree as though she were standing. Athos kept touching her face with his hands, gently, staring into it. Memorizing every detail, Holland thought, because he knew he wouldn't see her again. “You died like a Dane,” Athos whispered, and kissed his sister on each cold cheek. “You died like a warrior. I’m so _proud_ of you. We lived like the king and queen we should have been. We lived like Danes. I’m so proud to be your brother. Tell Mama I said hi, Astrid, okay? Tell Mama I said hi-" His voice caught, but Athos Dane did not weep over his sister's body. Instead, his eyes glittering with unshed tears, he picked up a hammer. "May the gods tremble with fear of you, Astrid. May I see you at the end of the world."

Then he and Holland, working slowly, nailed Astrid against the tree so she stood like a sentinel in the woods.

Holland flinched at first, the sound of a nail through skin not exactly an unfamiliar one to him (always in the fucking _ wilderness _), but soon enough the work overtook his mind, and he did as Athos ordered without hesitation and without complaint. 

Her skin was colder each time he touched her, and he tried not to think about it, to let time float around him. He had to brace himself with the back of his bad arm while using his good hand to hammer, so Athos moved much faster than he did, but soon enough it was done.

Athos turned slowly around to look at the handgun on the blanket, then back up at Holland. He picked the gun up and checked it - all six bullets were loaded.

"I wanted to see everywhere with you," He said calmly, casually. "I wanted to show you everything."

“Please,” Holland said softly. He wasn’t afraid, not in this moment. Whatever happened, it would at least be the end of three years of hell. “Please l-let me s-s-s-s.... save one. Don’t do this tonight.”

Athos picked up the small box, opened it, took out a plain platinum ring. "I measured your size while you slept. Put it on."

"Athos-"

"Put. It. On."

Holland took the ring, cold in his hand. It took some effort, gritting his teeth against the pain as he forced his right hand to work, but he slowly slid it onto his left ring finger.

"There. Now we die together. All three of us. Kell can serve my sister in Hell."

Athos turned and looked back into the back of the van, where Kell Maresh was fumbling at the knife in his shoulder, trying to pull himself free. Then he looked back at Holland, with an expression of calm and gentle love that made Holland’s knees go weak. 

“Get on the blanket, Holland. Lie down on your back.”

Holland closed his eyes and nodded, doing as he was told, while Athos walked over to the van. He climbed up into it and ripped the knife out of Kell without any mercy. Holland listened to his answering scream echo around the trees that seemed to blot out every hint of the world, leaving only their trunks the size of cars and houses, the heavy weight of their existence, older than his mind allowed him to understand.

He tried not to look, listening to the sounds he knew so well; the crunch of fist against bone and skin, the cry of pain. There was rustling, some protesting that grew louder and louder, and then Athos dumped Kell on the ground next to the blanket. He went down hard, limp as a drunk, and did not get back up again. His nose was bleeding and so was his bottom lip, right in the place Holland had touched.

Holland turned to look as Kell curled himself into a ball on his side, one hand pressed hard to the open wound in his shoulder, hissing each breath through his teeth. “Shit. Shit, I’m gonna die, ah, shit-”

“Ssshhhhh,” Athos said softly, gently. "Those are _ terrible _ last words, you little shit. Can't you do better than that? The Lord's Prayer or something?" He knelt slowly down on the blanket, leaning over Holland, who stared back up at him, feeling absolutely empty. Above them Astrid hung from the nails, like some kind of death personified, waiting to take him home. Her eyes were slitted open again and he felt her watching them together.

Athos leaned over, slowly, pressing the right side of his head against Holland, the cold barrel of the gun on the other side. "We can die together with one shot," he said quietly. "Like Danes. But first…" Athos extended his arm and put the barrel of the gun against Kell's red hair.

"Oh my god," Kell whispered, but he didn't - couldn't - move. Holland watched him curl up even more, heard the tears in his voice. "I can't stand up. I don't want to die, please- I... I... Our F-father, who art in h-heaven... hallowed be th-th-thy... oh god I don't want to die-"

_ I don't want to be a body. _

"Please," Holland pleaded. "Please let m-m-me save him. Just th-th… this once. Please."

“You want to save one?” Athos asked, softly. 

The gun pulled away, and Athos pulled back to look him in the eyes.

Holland nodded, and felt Athos’s fingertips graze his face, smearing blood on him, and he took in a deep breath. “Athos, I-”

“I know,” Athos said softly. He picked the knife up off the blanket, grabbed Holland's right hand, and sliced deep into his palm.

Holland did not scream, only ground his teeth together and groaned.

Athos smiled.

“I love you, too. Here’s what you’re going to do if you want to save him.”

* * *

Holland had no idea how long he'd been walking.

His left leg was agony, fire that had started in his knee and spread up and down until the whole damn leg hurt so badly he could hardly keep any weight on it. He dragged it along behind him as he moved, dipping slightly with each step, grunting at the effort. 

He counted his heartbeats, one by one by one by one by-

The redwoods around him soared so tall it felt more like passing buildings than trees, and he leaned on one or another when he could, buying his leg a few precious moments of relief. Kell Maresh's head rested in the crook of his neck, the feeling of his hair almost ticklish under his chin.

Kell was not quite dead weight, but not far off. His pale face had no more color left, and he was sweaty and soaked with dew and blood, from the wound in his shoulder and Athos's fingers across his face while Holland had laid on his back on the blanket and begged for Kell’s life, begged until his voice was hoarse and his whole body hurt. Until he’d given everything he had and finally, finally, Athos let them go.

Holland was the same, painted with his own blood, with Kell's, with Athos's at the end when he'd drawn on him with lazy circles while they laid underneath the place where he'd hung Astrid's body from the tree. Athos had listened to his pleading with the same sweet, soft affection in his eyes.

Sometimes Athos spoke to Astrid, as though she were still watching them with that little smile, and Holland half-expected to hear her answer.

At some point Kell had grabbed onto his hand, holding tight with his, and Holland had counted his heartbeats with the barrel of the gun against the side of his head again and Athos leaning over him, whispering, _ Tell me why he deserves to live when you let my sister die. _

He had no idea what he said, only the way his heart had felt beating hard against his chest. He must have said _ something. _All he heard was blood in his mind, his heart, his veins.

Holland had two clean streaks down his muddy red face where he had cried, for a while. He wasn't crying any longer, only forcing himself to keep moving, pulling Kell Maresh along with him long after he'd gone limp and boneless at his side.

Kell only walked sporadically, and his eyes were barely open, but he was trying.

God damn it, they were_ trying. _

Holland didn’t know how long they’d been walking trying to go back the way they’d come, following the trail of crushed bushes and tire tracks in the mud that marked the van's insane path through the giant trees.

The darkest hours of the night had gone gray and finally pinkish as the the sun began to rise. The fog was slowly burning away as they came out of the woods onto a road - finally, a road. 

_ “Count down from ten,” Athos said softly. "Don't open your eyes." _

_ Holland’s breath had hitched, but he had done as he was told, waiting for the gunshot to be the last thing he ever heard. _

_ Instead, Athos had whispered, "Thank you for trusting me." _

_ Then kissed him one more time and told him to take Kell and go - and to never, ever take off his ring. _

On either side the trees rose and rose, and he could hardly see the canopy.

Holland was only wearing his jeans. At least Athos had let him put them back on. He would have shivered in the frigid air if it weren’t for how hard he was working trying to walk and drag along a full-grown man at the same time. 

There was a truck driving down the road, a truck that slowed and stopped as it saw them. He saw someone in a uniform get out and simply crumpled to his knees on the side of the road, dropping Kell harder than he meant to. The other man hissed and tried to push himself up.

The park ranger stared at them. Holland thought of what they must look like, both of them smeared in blood and dirt, neither wearing a shirt, with spirals and whorls painted on their chests by Athos. Holland with a face (and chest, and navel) full of metal and Astrid's tattoos and Kell with a bright shock of red hair and pure white skin from blood loss. Half-human monsters shivering in the cold.

The ranger looked behind him, as though he expected someone to jump out and yell 'prank!', and then that didn't happen he turned slowly back again. “What the fuck…?” Holland watched the casual surprise turn to shock, and then to horror, and slowly to something like fear. Fear of him? Fear _ for _ him? He didn’t know anymore. 

_ Here’s what you’re going to do, _ Athos had said, trailing fingers over his skin. _ First, I want you to beg. If you love me and you _ prove _ it, then you can do one more thing today… _

_ You can save a life. The first and last I’ll ever let you save. _

_ I love you so much, Holland. So much I'll even do this for you. _

_ Now beg. _

“What happened to you?” The park ranger called out, but stayed close to his truck, clearly wary. Holland didn’t blame him. 

He took a deep breath, trying to stand back up, and went back down hard as his leg simply gave out. He looked up at the park ranger, trying to think of what to say, what Athos had told him to say. 

_ This is what you’re going to tell them, Holl-Doll. Your old last name belongs to us now. Here is what you say. _

“My n-n-name is H-... is Holl… is Holland Danskakarlek,” He said. “I went m-m-missing in Maryland th-... three y-years ago.”

“What…?” The park ranger was already grabbing at the phone at his belt, staring at Holland wide-eyed. “You’re what?”

Kell managed to get up onto his knees, looking up from behind his hair, coughing hard. “He's Holland _Vosijk._ I’m Kell… Kell Maresh. I went missing last night. Help us. My shoulder… please help."

“What…?” The park ranger repeated, dumbly.

“Please…”

_ “Please don’t hurt me,” Holland had begged, but they had never, ever listened. _

_ "How could I hurt you?" Athos replied. They'd tied his leg down, straight out in front of him, and Athos tapped the hammer gently against his knee. "I love you." _

_ "He loves you so much," Astrid murmured against his ear, her arms twisted through his as he struggled against her. "So, so much." _

_ He raised the hammer as high as it would go, and Holland thought, I hope we never come back to Florida. _

_ "This is for thinking you could leave me." _

_ Athos brought the hammer down. _

“Please huh-help us.” He let his face rest in the gravel next to the road. Kell grabbed onto his hand and he closed his fingers around Kell’s as tightly as they would go, right hand struggling to close past the second knuckle, but damn it, he was _ trying _. “Please help.”

“Shit,” The ranger whispered. “Shit shit _ shit. _ ” He took out a phone, fumbling the dial, finally putting it to his ear. “Ah, Tracy, we got a 911 - I know it’s early, but - Tracy just _ call, _ tell them to get a couple of ambulances and like a fuck ton of cops out here ASAP, I'm up by the trail I was going to clear today. We got… I don’t _know_ what we got, but it's real fucked up. Two males, serious injuries, can't tell age... definitely adults but they're... Trace, there's just a lot of blood here."

There was a pause.

"Say they're missing persons. Guy says he's from _ Maryland, _the other says he's Kell Maresh."

Pause.

"Yeah, like Maresh Logging."

"That's my dad," Kell groaned, lying back down on his side in the dirt. "Maresh Logging… my dad is Maxim… Maxim Maresh. Please, somebody call my dad." Holland's heart pounded, and all he saw behind his eyes was the way Athos had looked at him when he told him to pick Kell up and go.

_ Don't go far. I'll find you. And don't you dare take off that ring. _

“Someone’s coming,” The ranger said soothingly, moving closer. “Someone’s on the way. I'm just gonna help you get to my truck, okay? Yeah? We gotta get you two out of the road. Someone's coming to help."

Holland closed his eyes. Kell did not let go of his hand, and he could feel the younger man's pulse through his fingers and started, one by one, counting Kell's heartbeats.

Slow, too slow - but steady.

_ Just this once, I saved someone. _

_ Just this once, he loved me enough to let me go. _

He closed his left hand into a fist, and felt the press of the ring on his finger.

_ For now. _


	29. He Asked a Hunter (Prompt: Height Differences)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of an AU to the modern AU, and takes place in the past, during Holland Vosijk, Grad Student's time as a homeless teenager after his brother had a psychotic breakdown and tried to kill him and he and his father ended up losing their house in the aftermath. 
> 
> Marjori Dane goes to find her fiancé's wayward runaway son.

“I am looking for Holland Vosijk.”

She looked around the room, only barely holding back a sneer. There was a scratched-up entertainment center, the sort of cheap particle-board thing you buy at a discount store, with an old TV playing American football.

How she _ loathed _American football. 

Three boys sitting on an ancient pea-green plaid couch that sagged in the center looked up simultaneously, identical sneers on their very different faces, only for the expressions to drop into nervous fear when they saw Marjori Dane.

That was normal. 

Marjori Dane had always struck fear in the hearts of men, and she liked it that way. All men but one, anyway. That one man, her brilliant mild-mannered husband-to-be, was the reason she was out here, in a small college town in Bumfuck Nowhere, Illinois, in the first place. 

Marjori had come to collect her fiance’s wayward runaway son. 

She had followed his trail across five states of interviewing acquaintances, picking up the occasional box of personal items he'd left behind, and on one memorable occasion, two ex-significant others (a boy and girl) who were living in the same place, may or may not have dated him simultaneously, and remembered only that he'd gotten into a pine-green van older than he was with someone named either Tim or Toby.

"I dislike repeating myself, boys." She slid off her sunglasses, revealing narrow, feline eyes that were a startlingly bright, nearly unnatural blue against her pale skin and dark hair. Her cheekbones were set high and she knew exactly what effect her face had on men (and more than a few women). “I asked you a question.” Her voice was deep, melodic, with the vaguest hint of the accent of the land of her birth.

“Holy shit,” One of the boys said, almost breathing out the words with a kind of awe. “Am I just high or are you taller than the doorway?”

“It’s an old house,” Marjori replied dryly. “The doors were made shorter then, this one is only six feet tall. You are both high _ and _ I am taller than the doorway. Also, it is 11:30 in the morning, you probably should not already be high… or at least not high enough to hallucinate.”

“What the fuck else am I going to do around here?” The boy asked, and Marjori had to admit she had no answer for that. This was the saddest place she had seen so far, and it was cold outside, with a wind that cut and bit down to the bone. None of these boys were dressed for the oncoming winter, although the baseboard heater against the wall was valiantly chugging out a kind of lukewarm air that at least held off the worst of it.

“Whatever shortens your miserable days, I suppose,” She said, shrugging her shoulders. “I _ asked _if you have seen Holland Vosijk.”

“Nobody with that name crashing here,” One boy said. "Shit, what is that? French?"

Marjori Dane's lip curled and all three boys broke out in a cold sweat. "It. Is. Not. _ French. _"

“Are… are you a fairy?” A red-haired boy asked.

“Am I _ what? _”

“Ha, Rylie, you’re high as balls,” The dark-haired one said with a grin. He was missing one of his teeth. 

“Man, _ look at her,” _ Apparently-Rylie said. “She’s not _ human, _dude.”

A blond on the end, who looked a little bit like her own Athos, said, "Wait. I think he is here. Up in the attic."

"The attic?" The redhead frowned, thoughtfully. “You think?”

"Isn’t that guy up in the attic Hol-something? The nerd that cooks for us all the time? That might be him.” He gestured vaguely behind him, where a hallway that seemed almost to slant to one side led further back into the dilapidated, nearly-abandoned house she’d found herself in. “There’s stairs, two sets. You go up one, walk down the hall, then turn and take the other. Just keep going up ‘til you get there. If that's the guy, he sleeps up in the attic now, has for three days or so."

"Why?" She'd seen the attic window from outside. It was busted open, there's be no protection from the elements up there. He’d feel every inch of that awful breeze outside.

"Because Big Shot keeps bugging him to get into his pants."

"That's what he gets for being hot," Rylie said with a sneer.

"Pfffft. Shut the fuck up, Big Shot doesn't care about that. Yeah, lady, he's up in the attic." She raised an eyebrow, and watched the boy swallow nervously. "I mean… yes ma'am."

“Thank you,” Marjori said with a chilly politeness, and watched each boy shiver in turn with a slow smile on her face. They were still young enough not to know exactly why they feared her - indeed, many men never truly understood it - but their adult selves no doubt would learn to avoid those like Marjori and her twins.

Unless they wanted them, of course, in which case they would be helpless to resist. They were Danes, after all, and Athos and Astrid had shown every sign that they would follow in her footsteps and leave a trail of broken hearts, heads, and kneecaps around the world. 

Now. She turned her head, sliding sunglasses into her coat pocket, and moved out into the hallway. If he was here, she would bring him home.

Marjori Dane had been hunting down the boy for nearly six months now, and this was truly the closest she had ever been. If she didn’t miss her guess, he was about a week or so from leaving for the next place. He was a wanderer, her Nathan’s baby boy, never staying longer than a few weeks in any one spot. She’d been too late the last two times, had missed him by less than a week. 

She wondered if he was trying to be smart, making sure he was never in one spot long enough to be groomed by someone, roped into something that might get him found out by some sort of state authority, or turned into a junkie like the boys on the couch..

Nathan had said his youngest boy was smart, driven to work hard, and would probably try to stay one step ahead of anyone who came looking for him. Marjori would have found that immensely impressive if she weren’t currently maneuvering carefully around a stray cat with plaintively meowing kittens in a box in the hallway. A girl not even as old as her Astrid - this one had to be only ten or eleven - was carefully setting down a can of wet food into the box for the mama cat to eat. 

“Did you buy that food?” Marjori asked. The girl looked up at her, skinny and with dark hair cut brutally short, narrowed dark eyes glaring at her with no fear whatsoever. There was the obvious, unmistakable handle of a knife sticking out of one boot, and another was strapped to her thigh by a sort of handmade holster she'd made out of an old belt.

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Nothing. That is kind of you, to feed the mama kitty. Be blessed, child.” Marjori walked away, with the girl staring, baffled, at her back as she went. She wondered if the girl had parents, somewhere, who missed her like her Nathan missed his boy. Like she would have missed her Astrid and Athos if they were apart.

She couldn’t even imagine. Marjori lifted one hand to run her fingers along the charms that hung from the white-gold chain she wore at all times around her neck. One for Astrid, one for Athos, runes to protect them against the harm the world would do. She’d flown back home to have them made by a woman known for such things, and no harm had ever befallen her twins since she’d put the necklace on.

Their father had rolled his eyes at the blessings of the gods. 

He was their father no longer for a reason.

Nathan never mocked Marjori’s gods. He did not call on them himself, but that wasn’t necessary. Marjori did the calling for both of them.

She had a charm in her room waiting for her return, with a tiny H and a rune for protection. She had to bring him home before she could wear it.

_ Why do you have to go find him, Mama? _Astrid had asked, her gangly knobby-kneed teenage daughter, all long white-blonde hair and wide blue eyes. They weren’t thrilled at having to stay with Nathan for a week, but he’d promised lots of popcorn, the pizza rolls Marjori did not allow them to eat, the Mountain Dew she did not allow them to drink, and movies. No matter their fey nature and the way she thought they would rule their own lives one day, her children were still children in the end, and they liked Nathan Vosijk as a future stepfather well enough when he bribed them with forbidden treats.

There had been a meeting, and the vote had been unanimous. Marjori would not have agreed to this if her twins had not wanted him, too - they did everything together and always had. 

_ I wish you didn’t have to go, but I can’t wait to meet him. Do you think he’s handsome? _Astrid sighed, a little wistfully, resting her cheek on one knee. She would have said Astrid would be a heartbreaker one day, but she imagined it would be more accurate to say Astrid would break lives, instead.

_ Gross, Astrid, he’s gonna be our brother. _ Athos wrinkled his nose. _ Yeah, Mama, why can’t he just come to us? _Athos was already taller and broader than his twin sister, but they were otherwise largely identical. Their faces and hair took after their father, but their minds… those were Dane, through and through. 

_ Because he doesn’t want to be found, children. _

_ So why are we trying? Why not just leave him to be not-found? _

The answer, of course, was simply that it didn’t really matter what Nathan’s son wanted. What mattered to her was what _ Nathan _wanted - and he wanted his son back home. According to her sweet fiance, a mild-mannered accountant with one dead son, one missing one, and a long-absent ex-wife, their final argument had been quite intense.

_ What did you say to him that led to this? _

_ I told him that we wouldn’t have been homeless if it weren’t for what Alox did, _ Nathan had said, head in his hands. _ Honestly, I just meant that things got out of control over that. I don’t know how, but somehow he took it as me blaming _ him _ for Alox’s psychosis _ . _ He ran out of the shelter and I haven’t seen him since. If I could just get him home, Marjori, I’d be truly happy. _

_ I will bring you your baby boy, _She had said, firmly. Marjori was nothing if not a careful, methodical hunter, and the next day she had begun her search for the missing Holland Vosijk.

Marjori had analyzed the house, making important notes, before she ever set foot in the door. She knew the front and back door, every open window, every potential exit. She knew who had last owned the house, a long-dead woman whose nephew appeared to be the one going by Big Shot now. She knew everything except for the fact that her quarry was apparently sleeping in the coldest room in the whole house.

She stepped through the hallway as though she’d lived here all her life, moving around small piles of what she sincerely hoped was trash. Each door she passed had more people, teenage boys and girls already hard at work wasting away to nothing. Some looked at her. Most of them didn’t - or if they did, barely saw her at all.

For many of them, Marjori Dane’s presence would feel like little more than something they’d hallucinated.

She felt a twinge of regret for what their lives must be, to drive them to desperation so young, but in the end the struggles and sadnesses of strangers bounced off of Marjori’s mind, did not sink in, and her empathy had a very short limit. She had exactly three people she cared for in this world - the twins and Nathan.

And the boy, should he be where she thought he was.

She found a set of stairs, and began to climb. With only one front and one back door, she could keep him from escaping that way before she had a chance to make him speak with her. There were too many windows, though, and that broken attic window was only a few feet above a small bit of roof that would be safe enough to land on… assuming he didn’t just break right through it and crash two stories to the ground. 

She had a feeling Nathan’s son would know about fifteen exits from any place he stayed at. After all, this was the first solid lead where she felt like he would still be there when she showed up. 

She wondered if Toby or Tim and his green van were around here somewhere, or if the one Holland had ridden here with had already moved on and left him to face winter alone.

The second floor was much the same as the first, except that the teenagers up here were largely crashed out on smelly mattresses on the floor, snoring and sleeping in piles like puppies, huddled together under blankets that looked nearly stiff from no doubt disgusting pasttimes. Had she counted nearly 30 so far? How could there be so many children without homes in such a small place?

What was Nathan’s boy doing here with all of them? 

_ The one that cooks for us all the time. _Such a small thing that the boy had said, but it had made Marjori certain she’d picked the right place. Nathan cooked constantly, and said he always had, that cooking was one of the few ways he and his sons had been able to communicate with each other. He said that even in the shelters and halfway houses he and his son had drifted through after the eldest’s death, Holland had always insisted on cooking big meals with whatever food he could find.

Only someone who truly enjoyed cooking would bother to do so in a house like this one.

She found one more set of stairs, climbed it slowly, wondering if he would jump out a window or something to get away before she could speak to him.

She didn’t have to worry, of course; when she made it up into the attic, she found Nathan’s son still asleep on a single mattress on the floor, pushed up against the corner in the wide open space.

Marjori moved like a cat on silent feet even in her boots, and the boy didn’t wake up. She looked down at him, curled under two or three blankets, one hand in fingerless black gloves gripping a switchblade that was open even now, his fingers wrapped tightly around it. A hint of a heavy blue sweater could be seen above the blanket, but little more. There were no pillows here.

She knew it was him at a glance - Nathan’s same black hair, straight as bone, his pale skin, the angular shape of his face, softened only a little by sleep and youth. There was a scattering of acne along the boy’s jawline, but still, she saw his father in every bit of him. Holland could have been his father’s double, they were so similar. 

The mattress had sheets on it, the only one she’d seen in the house so far that did. A thick paperback was lying just above his head on the floor (Stephen King, she thought when she tilted her head, the one about the car) and folded on top of the book was a pair of thick black glasses with coke-bottle lenses, heavily scratched and no doubt the same glasses he’d worn the last time his father had seen him.

Marjori stepped back, putting a safe distance between herself and that switchblade, and then she said loudly, “Holland Vosijk?”

The boy came awake like a shot, sitting straight up with his knife out and ready, glaring at her with narrowed green eyes and no hint of fear. “I _ said _ don’t fucking come _ near _ me, Big Shot, I’m not fucking _ interested _...” His voice trailed off and he blinked, then scrambled for his glasses, slowly sliding them on.

He stared up and up and up until he met Marjori’s Dane’s very, very blue eyes.

“You’re tall as fuck. Who the fuck are _ you? _” Nathan Vosijk’s son, all of sixteen years old at the most, was not afraid of her. He only glared at her with that same defiance she had seen in Nathan when he argued with clients on the phone, the defiance that always won out in the end. His voice was shockingly deep for his young age, and she tilted her head. On the phone, she thought, you wouldn’t even be able to tell the father and son apart.

Marjori smiled. She thought she would like to hug this boy very much, all his staunch bravery and clean hair, even with having no home. She wondered where he washed it, if the water still worked in this place. How you even worked out a shower schedule with 30 other people.

“Hello, Holland. My name is Marjori and I’m here to take you home.”

“Fat fucking chance. Don’t have one to go to.” He got to his feet, wearing a heavy sweater over blue jeans even when he was sleeping, and she noted with a raised eyebrow that both looked clean. He was still wearing heavy combat boots, it occurred to her to keep his feet warm as the wind blowing through the broken window cut straight through her warm coat and chilled her. 

Compared to the boys and girls she’d seen in every other room of the house, you would hardly have been able to tell Holland was homeless at all.

You definitely couldn’t tell that he’d been on his own for nearly two years now. He wasn’t even her son (not yet) and she was so, so proud of him.

“Plus,” Holland continued, jabbing the knife in her direction for emphasis, “if you’re with the state, fuck you, lady - you assholes didn’t do shit when Dad and I needed you, you don’t get to put me in fucking foster care now. I have this handled just fine. Go fuck yourself.” He moved as if to go past her and Marjori put out a hand, gripping him by one shoulder, tilting her head down at him.

He looked up and met her eyes, and froze.

Ah. So a little afraid of her, after all. Well, good healthy fear was nothing to be ashamed of.

Holland had not yet hit his full growth, she thought - he couldn’t have been taller than 5’6” or so. He was skinny from not eating well, she could feel the bones sticking out of his shoulder under her hand, even through the sweater. If he didn’t start eating, he might not grow much more at all.

“You’re… really fucking tall,” He said, and his voice was quieter, more respectful, this time.

“I hear that a lot. Do you want to know who I am? I am not with the state, Holland. I don’t believe in states. The world is just the world, waiting to be conquered. States are imaginary lines we have drawn in the sand. Danes know no state.”

"... okay. Who are you, then? You're not the house's owner, are you? Big Shot said his aunt was dead, has been for years..."

"I am not the owner." 

"Then what the fuck are you doing here?"

"My name is Marjori Dane, and I am going to marry your father, Nathan."

"My father? Oh, fuck you_ both _ with a rusty chainsaw." Holland pulled almost violently away from her. "I hope you didn’t come to ask for my blessing - and how the hell did you find me, anyway? I don't need his _ help. _"

"Are you sure?" She gestured broadly around the open, empty space, the chilly breeze through the broken single window. "You are sleeping in a dead woman's attic with two dozen other homeless teenagers and they told me downstairs that a man named 'Big Shot' is trying to be your pimp."

"They... told you that? _ Who _ told you that? What Big Shot wants or doesn’t want is nobody’s fuckin’ business. I’m leaving soon anyway."

"I did not ask their names and I do not care. They were on what I have generously decided to call a couch."

"Oh, that's probably Kyle and Rylie, at least, they mostly live down there with the TV..." He trailed off, and then tilted his head back up at her. "Did Dad _ tell you _to come get me?"

He _ was _still a child, she thought to herself. Older than her twins, though not by much, and with a voice that might fool you, but still a child just the same. He did not want her to take him back, but there was hope in his voice - a very small hope, of a child who had had most of his hope kicked out of him by life - when he asked if his father had been the one to send her.

"He did not send me."

She watched his face crumble, just a little, and then go carefully flat and empty. This, she thought, was a teenage boy who had learned to manage expectations. What she had witnessed was a momentary lapse in an iron-willed self-control and nothing more. She fought the urge to put an arm around him and tell him that he could be a Dane, they would hold a vote, and she was sure Astrid and Athos would love him and make sure he was never alone again.

"Oh. Well, I didn't figure he would, by now. Congratulations on marrying Dad. If you want my blessing, well, I don’t exactly have a gift to give unless you want my copy of _ Christine _. I need to go get something to eat. Tim bought a bunch of eggs yesterday, I need to cook 'em for everybody." His voice was perfectly calm, almost careless, as though there had never been a moment he had hoped to hear his father had sent someone to find him after all. 

"Stop, Holland.”

Each moment she spent standing here with him, Marjori was more and more impressed.

"What?" He tilted his head at her, curiosity winning out over the shell he'd built around himself. 

She put her hand back on his shoulder. So thin, beneath the heavy sweater. So thin, to be cooking for so many. _ Does he eat the food he cooks, or give it all away? _ "I came _ because _ he did not ask me."

Holland's eyes narrowed behind those thick-rimmed glasses, making him look like he belonged on one of Nathan's beloved 1950's black-and-white TV reruns. It clashed, somehow, with the jeans ripped at the knees, too long with hems worn ragged and uneven from walking on them. His face did not quite match the tired T-shirt he wore, a charcoal gray that might once have been as black as his hair. "I don't know what that means."

"In a week, your father and I will stand before a judge. A few hours after that, we'll head out into the woods and do the hand-fasting that really marries us. I want you there, for him. I want it to be a surprise, that his son has come home to him at last.”

Holland swallowed, hard. She watched his face, looking for the tiniest hints of expression, and saw only emptiness. He would have made an excellent Dane. "What if I don't want to be there?"

She could hear the tremor in the question, and hear the words for their lies. Underneath the things he said, Marjori could hear what he was really asking: _ what if my father doesn't want me to be there? _

She smiled for him, and gentled it as best she could, though Marjori Dane had never in her life had an expression that could be called tender. "I will leave you to..." She looked around the room. "... this. But your father _ would _like you to come home." She reached out and pushed a bit of black hair away where it had totally covered one eye. “He loves you, child. He misses you deeply.”

Those green eyes looked up at her, and she looked back down with her own fierce blue. His face was empty, calm, but the corner of his mouth turned down, just a little bit, and she wondered at someone who could have such total control over his expressions so young.

_ What have you been up to, these past two years? I would like to know - but could Nathan handle hearing it? _

"Do you _ want _ to stay here, Holland? Do you like it here?"

"No. But I don't really know what else to do anymore. If I come back, what happens?"

"Nothing. You move in with us; my twins would love to meet you."

"You have... kids? I didn't think Dad would want..." He trailed off, but once again, Marjori saw the faintest flicker of his thoughts across his face. Behind all his stone there was a child, just like her own children, who hid their vulnerabilities behind the chaos they left behind them everywhere they went.

_ I didn’t think he would want a new family, _Hollad was thinking behind his eyes. She was a woman trained to see even the slightest expressions - she could see this. 

“My twins are nearly your age. They would be your family, too. This is not to replace what you have lost, Holland. There is no replacement for that. But your father mourns you, and he would love you to come home.”

Holland pressed his lips together into a thin line, meeting her eyes. Marjori tilted her own, giving him a little mischievous smile in response. "I like your father very much. I would like to like you, too. Let me drive you home.”

Holland paused. "You scare a lot of people, don't you?"

She didn't answer, but her smile widened, flashing sharp white teeth.

He snorted. "You don't scare me."

"Perfect. Now let's go."

She turned and headed for the stairs, and was unsurprised when Holland followed at her heels. In the end, of course, the will of a Dane was hard to resist.

No one spoke to him to say goodbye, although some of the teenagers they passed looked up and noticed them. She wondered if they had seen him as anything but the kid in the attic who cooked, how many of them here even knew his name - how many he had even spoken to enough for anyone to need to use it.

Outside the house, Marjori's bright red two-door sports car was parked in the driveway, with a small crowd of admiring boys and girls gathered around it, hardly daring to touch, terrified even to smudge it. She opened the door for him, watched him get in, and caught his hands shaking just the slightest bit when she closed the door.

When she started up the car, she turned to look at him, and said quietly, "Would you like to choose the music?"

He shrugged, slumping into the seat, and she could see his father in every single line of his face. "I don't know anything about music, I don't care. Listen to whatever. Do you think he wants me back, really? Or did you just say that to get me into the car?"

Marjori smiled, leaning over to ruffle that black hair until he batted her hand away, glaring at her without any real feeling to the expression. "Holland, he has been looking for you, every single day of every week of every month of every year, since you ran out the door. He's just not very good at finding."

"Then how did he find me now?"

Marjori laughed. "Because this time, he asked a hunter."**  
**


	30. Eight Months, Nine Days, and Nineteen Hours (Prompt: Pining)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soooo the final Serial Killer Gap Year chapter is huge and has gotten away from me, so it's going to be posted in two parts. I might have to finish out this month of prompts a day late, but hey...
> 
> This is Serial Killer Gap Year, so you've been warned; dark things happen.

"Hey… hey- Holland, wait-”

Holland barely heard the words. He hadn't been touched like this in so long (_ eight months, nine days, eighteen hours _), and he let his right hand curl as best he could around Kell's shoulder, pulling him closer. He buried his head into the side of his neck, lifted it just enough to smell that same flower shampoo, feel the softness of his hair. He started to fumble his left hand at the button on Kell’s jeans, kissed the spot on his lower lip he’d once touched with his fingers in the back of a van, thought about the difference between Kell’s eyes clouded over with drugs and fear then and clear and focused right on him now.

_ You always do what she says in the end. It’s just a matter of how you get there. _

“Is… is this what you want?” Kell’s voice was hesitant, but he slid his arms around Holland, and the feeling was safe, and secure, and better than _ they _ had ever felt and so much worse, because he should want it to stop. “I don’t know what you’re doing right now but…”

He shouldn’t have said Kell could come over for dinner. He hadn’t let anyone in his apartment, the little thing he paid for with the money Kell Maresh’s father had given him in exchange for never giving a single interview to the press, and he should have kept it that way.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled into Kell’s neck. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” He just wanted someone to touch him and he didn’t want to be touched at all. He just wanted to tell Kell he was grateful that there was someone, anyone at all, that he could speak to without stammering, and making him grateful was a knife they had used and now he only cut himself.

Two years and eight months they had touched him every day, over and over and over again, _ first one and then the other and sometimes both together, _ and it had been another eight months ( _ eight months, nine days, eighteen hours _ ) of nothing, and he just wanted… _ something. _

He wanted to be left alone and he wanted to get off and he just wanted it all to be _ better _ and Kell had brought over a bottle of vodka and some mixers and Holland knew what drinking meant… it meant ‘get drunk until you like it’, it always meant that. 

It meant Astrid asking _ how many bottles tonight, Athos? _ And Athos laughing, running his hand over Holland's stomach, answering _ at least three, _and it was never actually bottles of vodka they were talking about, but a private joke, and when they said more than one he knew he wouldn't be allowed to sleep.

It was even the same vodka, Astrid’s favorite. Kell didn't know, he couldn't have. When he had pulled it out of the bag, for a second Holland had been in a hotel room in any state at all and not in his own apartment in a little seaside town in California. For a second he’d smelled the burnt coffee Astrid drank from the tiny hotel room coffeemaker, for a second he’d heard the A/C unit running against the window and the sound of Athos in the shower, yelling at him to get in-

Then it had just been a bottle of liquor, but Holland knew what getting drunk meant. It meant at least someone would _ touch _ him.

Kell shifted uneasily, trying to get Holland to look at him, but he turned his head to the side. “I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do,” He said softly. “I’m not sure this is right, Holl. I'm not sure you… should."

_ What did that even mean? Since when was what I want important? _

He looked down, for a second, trying to think, feeling his heart pounding with fear inside his chest at the same time as he was nearly lit up with want.

“Please, talk to me,” Kell said softly. He grabbed onto Holland’s hand with one of his, and they were in the redwoods again and Holland was on his back, Astrid's body standing sentinel over Athos’s bizarre ritual, sweating even in the freezing air, Kell holding his hand as tightly as he could with his own, Holland counting his heartbeats with his eyes forced shut-

_ one... two... three... four... five... six... seven... eight... nine... ten _

“H-Holland?” Kell leaned in closer to his face, reaching up to touch him. “Your eyes…”

_ No one will ever touch you the way I do, Holl-Doll. Who else would ever try? You think that little shit cares about you? Do you think _ anyone but me _ cares about you? _

_ One… two… three... _

Theon, the Doberman Pinscher they’d given him a couple of months ago as a PTSD therapy dog (expedited thanks to Maxim Maresh's hush money and a series of increasingly insistent calls by his therapist), began to whine in his spot on the cushion next to the couch, his little purple monster stuffie between his paws. He’d been gnawing at it, lazily, with a hint of the puppy he’d only recently stopped being, but he dropped the stuffie from his mouth and looked up, suddenly all business, eyebrows furrowed so the tiny brown spots nearly met.

Kell pulled away from him, and it was a relief and it was awful, both at the same time. “Holland, you need to say something.” His face was covered in blood and dirt and his hair was full of sticks and then just as suddenly it wasn’t, and he wasn’t cold, and they weren’t in the woods at all.

_ Are you still having visual disturbances? _ His therapist had asked at his last appointment, and he’d told her no, because lying to his therapist had become basically his only real hobby at this point. He told her he didn’t see things any longer. He told her he didn’t think about sex, not at all, and definitely not about sex with _ them _. He absolutely never told her that he missed them, in the bed, and that he struggled to sleep alone. 

He had never, ever, not once, told her that Kell’s hand had gripped onto his while he had given everything he had left to beg for both their lives.

The doctors knew what had happened, at the end. He assumed they told the cops. Holland told them only what he could stand to say out loud.

“This wasn't why I asked to come over."

“I know. But we’re doing this now.” _ Did _ he want to do this? He couldn’t tell, it hadn’t even been something they considered. It'd been so long and it was hard to remember that it _ should _ matter if he wanted to. “You’re doing this with me now. _ You _ want to.”

“You… you came on to _ me, _ though-” 

Heart pounding, he put his bad hand up over Kell's mouth, hoping to stop him from speaking, even as fear was a wildfire burning him alive. He had, hadn’t he? He had been the one to lean in first, because they were nicer when he was the first one to start it, they hurt him less. He couldn’t look away from the bottle, couldn’t think about anything else but Astrid’s laugh. 

“Ssshhhh,” He whispered. “Just stop, please, just-”

“Stop what?” Kell pushed his hand away. “Stop talking? Or stop touching you?”

Holland had no idea how to answer. There was always a right way and a wrong way to answer a question, and he didn’t know Kell’s right way for this one. 

Did Kell want him to say stop? Or did he want him to say keep going? 

He had to say the right answer, he couldn’t fail the test.

He hadn't been touched in so long. It had been nearly three years of them, the two of them, all the time every single day, so many _ times _ a day sometimes, and then there had been so long ( _ eight months, nine days, eighteen hours _) with nothing at all, and he just-

He didn't want to be touched ever again, and he was so fucking scared he could scream, but at the same time just having someone _ touch him _ was better than all the not-touching, because at least… at least it was _ something. _

Theon whined again, a little more insistently this time, and Holland could hear him shifting around as he stood up, moving to the couch, laying his head slowly on Holland’s leg. The gentle weight started to bring him back, a little bit, and he paused, looking off into space, trying to think around the fog.

“Look, I just wanted to watch TV, Holl, I promise. I’m just here to remind you that you have somebody. You have to _ tell me _ what you want.”

Holland took a deep breath, let it out through his nose, tried to remember the exercises his therapist had given him, but all of it was gone, chased away by hands on him. He slowly turned back to look at Kell, and for a second he saw a totally different set of blue eyes, blond hair. 

_ It doesn't matter what you want, _ Athos said. Kell said something too, he thought, but Athos was louder. _ You know what I want you to do. _

He took his shirt off, pulling it over his head and tossing it to the side in silence, holding the gaze of a man who was Athos and Kell and neither and both. He felt himself smile, just the tiniest bit, because Athos had always liked it when he smiled.

It hadn't been so bad, at the end, when he was trying to be what they wanted.

“So much less of you is metal,” Kell said softly, in a breath of air, looking him over. Holland blinked, surprised at red hair and warm skin. “So much less.”

_ Look at you. _ He could almost hear his voice, nearly smell him, feel the hand against the small of his back and the whisper against his ear, where he still wore a single silver earring, the first one they’d given him. _ No one else on earth would want you for anything but this. No one but us. Who else would have kept you even when you were so stupid all the time? All those mistakes you made? _

_ Why else but this would anyone else ever want you? Who else but us would love you this much? _

He grabbed Kell by the face with both hands, right splayed out and left curling into his red hair, and pulled him down to kiss him where they sat on the couch. Kell was shocked and stiff at first, but Holland knew what drinking meant, what it always meant - it meant ‘get drunk enough to like it’ - and after a second, Kell began to melt against him, sliding hands over bare skin. 

He shifted around, gently pushing Theon’s head away and trying to get himself to where he was kneeling with a knee on either side of him. He let his weight rest on Kell’s thighs, and he couldn’t remember exactly who he was kissing any longer. Red hair came and went, replaced with blond, and it didn’t matter. None of it mattered, just the feeling of someone finally fucking _ touching him. _

Holland felt Kell’s thumb press, just a little, against the collarbone piercings he’d kept, too, and hitched in a breath. The earring, the tongue ring, and the collarbone were the only ones left; he’d taken out the rest, but he couldn’t take these out, and he didn’t know why.

Yes he did.

The tongue ring had been Astrid’s idea, and it was his fault she was dead. He couldn't take it out because it was hers. The other two were Athos’s idea, and he was coming back, sooner or later.

_ Don’t go too far. I’ll come find you. _

Athos was a voice inside his head, flickering in and out of view in front of him. Astrid a simple memory of her on his other side, whispering in one ear and the other, their hushed voices nearly identical. _ So you’ll only fuck him after we’re not there to see it? That's not fair. _He could feel Astrid’s longer, thinner fingers slide slowly over his shoulder, the way her skin never stopped being cold.

_ It never will now, thanks to you. I'm always cold now because of you. _

_ Please don’t leave me I love you. _

He wanted this and he hated it and he was tired of being without it and he just wanted to fuck someone and then crawl into his bed under his blankets and not come out until his body stopped wanting things that terrified his mind. 

_ You have sustained an injury every bit as real as the one in your hand, Mr. Vosijk, _ his therapist had said the first time they met. _ The experience you went through in captivity is not something you can shrug off. No one expects you to, and it’s not possible to do so. You must develop the skills to begin healing, but you will see lasting effects from trauma experiences and your enforced captivity. _

Another thing he did not tell his therapist was that he hated that she kept using the name Vosijk when Athos had told him it wasn’t his any longer. Every time he heard it, he thought of that again, of the way Astrid’s voice had gone sing-song and melodic every time she called him Holland Danskakarlek, beloved of Danes...

Holland, hand shaking, started to unzip Kell’s jeans. His heart was beating so hard he worried Kell could _ hear it. _

Kell tilted his chin up with one hand, kissed him gently, and said softly, “Please don’t do this if you don’t want to. Nothing changes if you say no.”

_ No is never the right answer. Everything changes if I say no. I don’t know if I want to or not but I miss being touched so badly. They never stopped touching me. _

_ Please touch me. _

_ Please don't. _

Theon suddenly pushed his way up between the two men, forcing them apart, turning his brown eyes on Kell and slowly lifting his lips back from his teeth in a snarl. At the same time, he leaned slightly against Holland, putting all his warm weight on him. 

Holland felt his breathing begin to slow, putting his hands up over his face. His fingertips burned where they had touched the zipper. “Shit,” He muttered.

Theon began to growl, low in the back of his throat. Not a threat, not yet, but a warning. His eyes were on Kell, quiet and watchful. Holland put a hand on his back and Theon let the growl slowly fade out.

Kell’s face went pale except for two streaks of bright red along his cheekbones. “Holland, are you…”

“_ Shit _,” Holland said again, but softer this time. "I'm sorry, Ath-... Kell."

Kell looked like he’d been punched. “Did you just almost call me-”

“No.” 

_ Yes. _

“God_ damn _ . Are you having a _ flashback right now? _ Did you come on to me because you thought I was-... was-” He pushed himself standing and backed away. “I think I’m going to be sick. You wanted to because you thought I was your _ rapist? _”

“You think _ you’re _going to be sick?” The worst part was that Holland didn’t feel all that sick - mostly, he was mostly just sort of angry that it had stopped.

_ Rapist? Was that it? Was that all he was? But... _

“I-... Holland, I didn’t come over for this, I swear. You know that, right? That I really just wanted to come over and watch a show with you?”

“Yes.” His voice was expressionless, words like stones that fell - were forced - out of his mouth. “I know. Thank you. I’m grateful.”

_ Feeling gratitude for the small mercies your captors doled out is perfectly normal, _ His therapist said. _ It’s a survival mechanism, feeling gratitude and developing a kind of affection. The brain will adapt to any situation as best it can to keep you alive. _

_ Gratitude is a survival tactic. _

“But… so you know that _ you _ came on to _ me _-”

_ Gratitude is normal. _

“I know I did. Sometimes I forget where I am, I just…”

_ What if I still miss them? Is that normal? _

Theon’s weight was a comfort, a reminder of how long it had been (_ eight months, nine days, eighteen hours _), and Holland let himself lean over against the dog’s back, pressing his face into his fur, and felt Theon shift even more weight onto him. The edges of the world solidified again around him. He was in his apartment, that was all. 

Standing three feet away looking absolutely disgusted with himself (_ disgusted with Holland, maybe? Was he disgusted with him, for what they had made him into?) _ was not Athos Dane but Kell Maresh, bright red hair and warm blue eyes and his fly still halfway down. Holland looked up at him from where he sat on the couch with the dog. “Was it just because you thought I was… _ him? _”

There was a right way and a wrong way to answer every question, and Holland took his time, deciding, let the silence stretch between them as he thought. “No,” Holland said finally, but he didn’t look up. “I wanted to before I thought you were him. But it’s… it’s all wound up together now… all the wanting gets twisted around th-them."

“I… I should go,” Kell said, and his voice was strangled. “I should go. I’m so sorry. I’ll call you in a little bit. We’re... still friends, right?”

“Of_ course _ we are. Kell, I… I d-d-didn’t mean… fuck, I’m stammering, I swear I d-didn’t plan-”

“No, I know you didn’t. But me being here wasn’t… wasn’t a good idea, was it? I shouldn’t have come over here. I’ll call you, okay? We can meet somewhere again, the bay or something, somewhere public. I just. I have to go. I can’t believe I… oh shit. I should have noticed, Holl, I... I’m so sorry.” Kell turned and all but fled out the door and Holland stared at his back as he went.

_ Please don’t go. _

He’d given the wrong answer, hadn’t he?

_ Please don't leave because of what I've been made into. _

When the door slammed shut, something in Holland cracked open and he forced himself to his feet, pushed Theon off of him gently, and half-stumbled, half-ran after him. 

In the parade of cops, detectives, lawyers, and everyone else who showed up right after they’d crawled out of the woods begging for help, the doctors had been there, too. There was always a new doctor around insisting that he get his more permanent injuries fixed, his hand and his knee, but he refused. Both had healed as much as they could, he was used to living with his hand this way, and besides that, the idea of being under anesthesia and therefore completely helpless was more frightening than living with an injured hand and knee could ever have been.

If he was out, he couldn’t try to fight back if Athos came back for him. He had explained it patiently to anyone who would listen, at first, that Athos was coming back for him specifically, that was why Athos had chosen to live and not send himself and Holland and Kell to Astrid. Because he’d decided that he would let Holland save someone and then come back for him.

_ And I was so fucking grateful for it. _

They’d only found one body, after all. Just Astrid, nailed to a tree, the blanket still spread below her, the van right where it'd come to a stop. 

Just one body, and Athos’s survival pack had been gone from the back of the van, along with Astrid’s archery set.

No one believed him - that Athos would take such a risk as coming to see the last person he’d spoken to. Maybe they were right, because he hadn’t seen him since. But he was sure, so sure, that it was just a matter of time.

So he’d refused any help for his old injuries, and mostly he didn’t mind, but it meant that as he went after Kell, one of his legs still dragged, just a little, behind the other and slowed him down. It made going downstairs awkward and uncomfortable and occasionally painful as he forced a knee to cooperate that simply couldn’t anymore.

He’d closed the door, leaving Theon in his apartment whining with the need to be right next to him at all times, and made it out the little front door in the tiny lobby in time to see Kell’s red hair disappearing halfway down the block.

“K-Kell,” He tried to say, but it hardly came out as a word at all, just a breath of nervous air. "Come back."

He stood there, watching him go, alone.

“What the fuck did you do to _ him? _” A familiar voice asked behind him. "Are you fucking around behind my back, baby?"

For a second Holland thought he was hallucinating again.

Then he turned around and saw Athos Dane standing there, leaning against the dumpster they put the trash out in, in a dirty hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans and unkempt hair that hung in greasy clumps in his face.

Holland froze. Eight months, nine days, and nineteen hours was how long it had taken Athos to come back for him. 

“Hey, Holl-Doll,” Athos said without moving, only watching him, leaning his back casually against the dumpster. Holland could have tried to run, but he couldn’t go very fast and Athos wouldn’t have let him go far. The casual, relaxed posture was just a pose; Holland knew him well enough to see that he was tensed, on edge, ready to spring forward and grab him if he tried to get away.

He could have screamed, but Holland knew what happened when he signaled for help. He had only ever tried to get help a few times - he’d had a hand bashed in after listening to them kill people. He’d had a kneecap broken by Athos’s hammer while Astrid murmured about how _ loved _he was in his ears, until it was all he could hear over the pain.

He could have cried out for Kell, he was probably still close enough to hear it, but… Kell had seen what they had done to him and run from it. 

He probably deserved this.

“Hi,” He said instead, because it was the only word he seemed able to form. “H-h-hi, Athos.”

“Did you miss me?” Athos pushed himself casually away from the dumpster, walking over to him, and Holland couldn’t look away, couldn’t even move. He’d seen Athos so many times everywhere he went, and none of those sightings had turned out to be real, but when cold fingers touched the silver earring in Holland’s right ear, he had to brace his right leg to keep himself standing at all, as his left one simply gave up immediately.

Athos's fingers were rough and calloused, more than they had been before, and he moved up against Holland, the solidity of him against his side. Holland closed his eyes, turning his head to the side to let Athos nuzzle in against him, taking in a breath at the feeling of air against his neck, of lips.

“Yes,” He said, the word came out of him unwillingly, as though he were compelled to be honest, cursed. His chest burned over his heart, as though someone had lit a fire there. “I missed you.”

There was a right way and a wrong way to answer questions, and with Athos, at least, Holland usually knew the right way. 

Athos smiled, fingertips trailing down the side of his neck, across his collarbone to feel the bumps under his shirt, making a soft approving noise when he felt them. The hand moved across his shoulder, Holland shaking like a leaf, and then the rough fingertips made their way down over his arm. 

He slowly picked up his left hand and then looked him in the eyes, kissing the back of his hand like a lord with a lady in an old movie. When he spoke, his voice was slightly hushed. “You’re still wearing my ring."

“Y-you told me to. You s-s-said don’t take it off, in the woods-”

"I know. I missed you so much. You're all I've thought about for months, just you, every day you.” He touched the side of Holland’s face, and he hated him and loved him in equal measures and Kell was so close by, still, if he hadn’t made it to his car yet. So close by but too far away to help. “Oh, Holl. Who else loves you as much as I do?”

“No one,” Holland replied, and it was true, wasn’t it? 

“So who _ was _ that, hm? That you chased away?” Athos looked that direction, eyes narrowing, sliding an arm around Holland like they were old lovers reunited. Which… weren’t they? “What kind of asshole thinks they’re too good for _ my _ Holland?”

“H-he’s not anyone,” Holland said softly, leaning into his embrace, trying to distract him from thinking anymore about it. His heart began to pound again, fear a kind of cold-and-hot shift under his skin, and at the same time it was… nice to not just be waiting for him to come back any longer.

Athos had come back for him. He could stop standing in place, waiting to be found.

“Just someone I was t-t-trying to be friends with.”

“Hm. You should know better. He tried to fuck you, didn’t he?” Holland looked away, down at the ground, and felt Athos’s fingers gripping onto his chin, forcing him to look back up. “Yeah, I thought so." Athos snorted derisive laughter and Holland flinched. "What else did you expect to happen? He got a good look at your face and knew exactly what you are.”

Athos walked slowly around behind him, reaching up to touch the back of his neck, letting his fingers trace the rune and the letters that were still there. "You left this, too,” He said, tenderly, and Holland ground his teeth together to keep his jaw from trembling, forced his face into the blank emptiness that had been his only protection against them. “But you took out every other thing we gave you? But just the earring and your collarbone?”

“No. I k-kept one more.”

“What?”

Holland stuck his tongue out, let the little silver ball show just a little, and closed his mouth again, clicking the ball against the back of his teeth, a nervous habit. He let his good left hand twist into the fabric of his own shirt, wishing he had just gone through with it with Kell, kept him in the apartment, had someone with him so Athos stayed away.

No… no, Athos would have just come in after them both.

“You left Astrid’s, too. That was good of you. Do you miss her?”

This bit of truth was easier to tell. “Yes.”

_ I dream about you, and in my dreams you take me away again - or we’re together in my bed - or I’m still on the floor at Ros’s place watching you smoke my joint while I’m tied up on the floor. In my dreams about her, she dies. Over and over and over again, she dies, because of me, and I wish I had never talked to that bartender and I wish I had never left you. Then I wake up, and I call Kell, and I try to remember why I wanted to be free. _

“You live in this house, right? Second floor? Take me up there. I need a shower and I’m starving.”

“But-”

_ But my apartment is safe. It's the only safe place. _

“But I h-have a d-d-dog. He’s… he’s mean. I got him for p-p… puh-”

“Protection?” Athos raised an eyebrow. “You got a dog to protect yourself from _ me _, didn’t you?”

_ I got him for PTSD to deal with how fucked up I am because of you, _Holland had been about to say, but he bit his lip to keep from correcting Athos and nodded. It was close enough to true, anyway.

“Hmph. We’ll talk about that later. I need a shower, and some dinner, and then I want to have a nice, long talk about our _ relationship. _ Lock the dog up or throw it out a window, I don’t care. I want to take a shower with you.”

“B-but-”

Athos leaned over, standing just behind him, and licked the tattoo on the back of his neck, gripping him by the arms to hold him still. “But what?”

A shiver ran straight down his spine, and Holland's breath hitched, caught in his lungs. “I d-d-don’t want t-to.”

“Since when does that matter?” Athos smiled, sharp teeth like a shark’s white in the shadows. He slid one hand into Holland’s back pocket, and it felt like ice. “You can go up there on your own or I’ll force you.”

Holland closed his eyes, trying to think of anything else he could do. There was a phone on his kitchen table, the one Kell had given him while he was still in the hospital. He could call someone if he could get that phone. "I'll go." 

He turned, Athos right behind him, the familiar presence always just that little bit too close. The walk up the stairs felt like walking to an electric chair, and he wondered if Athos would just kill them both, finish out the plan he'd had in the woods and be done with it.

His apartment was safe, he thought as he climbed the stairs.

It was safe, he thought with sinking fear as Athos waited out in the hall as he went in, pushing Theon back from his attempts to get right out the door, already growling and snarling and snapping at Athos.

“Sorry, buddy,” He said, gripping him by the collar to drag him unwilling, trying to dig his nails into the floor, into the bedroom. “I’m so sorry. It’s g-g-gonna be okay, all right?” He closed the door and stood, for just a second, breathing hard with his back to it, listening to Theon whine and scratch at the door, desperate to get back out where he could do his job and stand between and separate Holland from his fears. 

Theon had been his favorite of the dog photos they’d sent, because he looked like a dog that would defend him, a support system, something to keep him safe. 

Instead, he’d just locked him up to let Athos invade his life again. When he opened the door, Athos was smirking, confident Holland would do exactly what he wanted, and the worst part of it was that he was right.

The monster that had killed his best friend, ruined his life, and kept him as some kind of goddamn _ pet _for nearly three years had walked right back up to him and he’d let him in the front door.

The apartment, at least, was supposed to be _ safe _, he thought as Athos took his hand and pulled him so hard he stumbled and nearly fell over towards the bathroom. It wasn’t very big, and had grime ground so deep into the grout you could never clean it out, but Athos looked around with approval nonetheless.

“God, I missed you so much,” Athos said in a voice thick with tears. “I love you, Holland.” There was a silence, and when he looked up Athos was staring at him, with wide blue eyes. “I loved you so much I made sure you couldn’t leave me. Who else would love you enough to make sure you wouldn’t leave, Holl? Who else?”

“N-no one but you.”

Holland flinched when Athos turned the knob and the shower started up, feeling every pulse of blood through his veins. He hated the sound of the shower, and at the same time thought, _ finally, someone is going to touch me. _

Athos looked back at him, and smiled, and it was a smile full of love and gentleness and _ understanding _, because who on Earth knew him better than Athos did, now?

"Get your clothes off," Athos said, already pulling off the hoodie, voice muffled behind the fabric. "Help me wash my hair."

_ Help, _ Holland thought, without sound. _ Someone help me. _

“I _ said _get your fucking clothing off,” Athos snapped, and Holland’s hands jerked back to life without his consent. He pulled his shirt off and Athos snorted with disgust at what he saw.

“So much less of you is metal now,” He said. “That’s really fucking disappointing. We’ll have to fix that. Now get in the goddamn bathtub. I've been thinking about this for eight fucking months.”

Holland did as he was told.

* * *

Down on the street below, Kell had made it the whole way back to his car before he stopped and turned back around, pissed at himself for abandoning Holland when he’d clearly been going through a flashback, and being abandoned by the only person he regularly talked to definitely wouldn’t help.

He sighed, kicking at a small rock on the side of the road as he walked. He was such a dick. He’d said all the wrong things about it, he’d made Holland feel even worse. He’d have to go back and do something, right? At least apologize, and remind Holland that none of it was his fault, he was still healing. 

It took him a while, trying to figure out what to say and how to say it. He probably stomped around being angry at himself for a good forty-five minutes, but finally he made it back to the little apartment-house, only to hear the sound of Theon’s desperate, frantic barking from halfway down the block. When he made it back to the house, he stood on the ground staring up at Holland’s bedroom window. There was no light on in there, but he knew the sound of Theon freaking out when he heard it.

“That’s one pissed off dog,” Kell said out loud.

But Theon was always _ with _ Holland - _ always _ \- and service dogs didn’t just bark like that. They only barked in emergencies, or when their assigned person really needed help.

“... Shit,” Kell said. “Shit, did I fuck him up that badly?” He was such a dick. He should just go home now and get the hell out of Holland’s life, he’d only made things worse by being here when all he’d intended to do was give him a friend and maybe help make things better.

There was another window along the side, where the living room would be, and Kell moved around the corner of the house to get a look at it. The light was on in _ there, _and Holland had never bought curtains, so he could see right through a broken part of the blinds to the room inside. He’d just look and see if he saw anything and then head home and leave him be.

He watched a shadow move across the blinds, then a face through the broken section. Kell felt a wash of ice down his spine as he saw a flash of wet white-blonde hair and a scruffy half-grown bearded jaw. 

A second later another shadow followed it, Holland’s empty, broken face. Kell still had nightmares about that look, when he’d been slowly getting colder lying in the dirt with one hand pressed to his bleeding shoulder and the other wrapped around Holland’s fingers. 

Kell had been certain they were both about to die, right there in the woods. He’d held onto Holland because he just wanted to hold on to someone when it happened, when it ended.

Then - and in his nightmares - Kell tightened his grip until it hurt them both. It woke him up, reminded him that it had only been one night… at least for him.

It hadn’t been just one night for Holland, and tonight, when it counted, he’d been an asshole and left him here alone. Kell had only met Athos Dane once and had been high as a kite nearly the whole time, but it was a face that bled into him everywhere he went, and he knew exactly what he’d seen in Holland’s window.

Kell swallowed, dug his phone out of his back pocket, and started dialing.


	31. Ths Run Of Luck (Prompt: Only One Bed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final piece of this monthly challenge is our final Serial Killer Gap Year piece, bringing this whole saga to a close! I still had one more idea for the Modern! AU and may write and post that, but I made it all 31 days' worth of prompts, so I think I declare myself a winner here.

Holland came out of the bathroom with Athos just ahead, the two men wrapped in towels, Holland drying off his hair one-handed while Athos pretty much just let the water drip onto the floor. 

He felt a little better and a whole lot worse, all at once. 

“There, that’s better,” Athos said, stretching his arms above his head. “Don’t you always feel better after a shower? At least, the way  _ I  _ take showers makes  _ me  _ feel better. You might limp for a while.”

“I limp anyway,” Holland said quietly, rubbing at a new bruise on the side of his neck. He put his clothes back on mechanically, body moving without brain, and watched Athos pull on a pair of Holland's PJ pants that were folded in the clean laundry pile next to his couch and nothing more.

There were new scars on Athos that hadn’t been there eight months ago, healing cuts, some bruises. He really had been living in the wilderness until he’d decided to hunt Holland down. Without thinking, he reached out with his left hand and traced a long new scar, still red, down Athos’s arm. “How did this happen?”

When he wasn’t remembering what his situation was, he stopped stammering with them. He hadn’t stammered with Athos and Astrid, except when he was scared, before. But he’d been scared all the time with everyone else.

Athos grinned at him, clearly pleased that he’d reached out of his own volition, and took Holland’s hand, kissing at the wedding ring again, lifting it up to press his lips against the inside of his palm, flicking his tongue out.

Holland jerked his hand back as if it’d been burned. “Don’t,” He said tightly. “Please don’t.”

“Would you believe me if I said a fought a bear?” Athos said, apparently unbothered. 

“No.”

“Good, because I didn’t. I fell down a hill and cut myself on a rock.”

Holland’s mind was racing, trying to come up with something -  _ anything _ \- he could do to save himself. With Athos right here, though, his body wanted to slide right back into powerlessness, accept what he was given as all he’d ever have, as just more bad luck.

No. There had to be  _ something  _ he could do. There was only one of them, now, and that was one less person whispering in his ear that he would never get away. That was one less person watching him while he slept. That was one less person to hold him down while the other one hurt him.

There had to be something to that that he could use, he just had to figure out what. Athos was the only one who cared about him, that had to be useful somehow, too. Athos had loved him enough to let him take Kell back up to the road to be saved. He had loved him enough to come back for him.

That had to mean something, that had to give him an opening to finally get away for good… if he even wanted to.

_ At least he loves me. And I never have to take care of myself, he'd take care of me. And Astrid said he needed someone to help him… _

_ No, God damn it, that's their thoughts, not yours. _

Theon was still barking, and Holland caught Athos giving a dark look towards the bedroom door. The thought of him hurting Theon washed all Holland's unwilling, unwanted affection towards him away all at once.

"I-I could call someone to come get him," Holland said quickly, moving around so he stood between Athos and the closed door. "Right now. He’d stop barking if someone came and got him. I w-wouldn’t say anything, Athos, you know I wouldn’t, you know I don’t anym-more…”

“Not yet. We need to talk first. Do you have anything to eat?” Athos reached out as if to touch his stomach and Holland moved away from him, instinctively.

"Don't," He said, softly. "Not already. Not again."

Athos grabbed onto his wrist, holding him in place, looking at him with narrowed eyes. "You just said that before. Why do you think you get to say ‘don’t’, suddenly, Holl?"

"N-no, I d-d-d… I d-don’t think that," Holland said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. "Just… it's been a while, g-give me time, okay? I have to g-get used to it again. It’s b-been… no one touches me now."

“What about  _ him?” _

“Th-that’s why he l-left.”

“Hm.” Athos relaxed and patted the side of Holland's face. "Fair enough. I wasn’t exactly nice to you in there, was I? Fine, fine, take some time to recuperate. We need to really talk about where things are headed between us first, anyway. Get me something to eat."

He drifted to the kitchen like a ghost and made a crunchy peanut butter sandwich with honey and bananas, not even seeing his own hands as they moved, his heart rabbit-fast in his throat. The sandwich was Athos’s favorite, and Holland hadn’t ever realized consciously before that he’d kept these exact ingredients on hand because he was waiting for Athos to find him and knew he’d be hungry when he did. 

He put the sandwich, on a plain paper plate, with a glass of water next to it, down in front of Athos on the plastic top of his scuffed-up little metal kitchen table. "Sit," Athos ordered with an easy command and confidence.

Theon's continued barking and scratching was the backdrop to all of it. There was a metallic crash, and Holland winced as he sat down, wondering what Theon had knocked over in his quest to find a way out. 

He wondered if Athos would at least let him say goodbye to the dog.

While Athos ate, taking slow and methodical bites and chewing carefully, Holland kept his eyes down, focused on his cell phone lying in the middle of the kitchen table between them. Athos watched him with those ice-blue eyes, and he didn't look up.

"You've been waiting for me," Athos said, and it wasn't a question. 

"Yes."  _ There wasn’t anything left but you, and Kell Maresh refusing to leave me alone, and now he’s gone, too. There’s nothing left but you. _

"You didn't go far."

"You s-said not to. I thought about going back to Maryland, but…” Holland shrugged. “I didn’t have anything to go back to.”

"No. You didn’t. No one loves you but me.”

“I know.” 

Theon’s barking trailed off, became a soft whine, and then went silent. Holland fought back a panic and dread that threatened to overtake him. Even the dog had given up. 

Then Holland’s phone went off at top volume and he jumped with the shock. Who could possibly be calling  _ him?  _ The ringtone sang  _ did you laugh (you know I did) did you cry (couldn’t get it right), _ and Holland looked up in a panic, scrambling to grab it, just as Athos calmly put his hand out and picked it up himself, looking at it as it continued to sing.

Athos’s lip curled in a snarl when he saw the name that popped up. "Kell Maresh," he said thoughtfully. The picture that came up when Kell called had been set by Kell himself, a selfie the redhead had taken of the two of them when they were still in the hospital. Holland wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t exactly frowning, either - and Kell had still been wearing the sling to help his shoulder heal and smiling brightly. "That's the boy that got my Astrid killed." He looked at it, then smiled slowly, and held it out to Holland. "So you  _ did  _ finally fuck him. I  _ knew _ it was a good gift idea. Answer it."

_ Did you live? (always on the edge) _

_ Did you lie? (causing such a fright) _

Holland shook his head, feeling his hair shift, trying to focus on something to keep his mind from drifting away. “I d-d-don’t want-”

_ (did you love?)  _

_ Oh, to be forgiven  _

_ (did you try?)  _

_ but it wouldn’t be right _

"Answer the phone," Athos said evenly over him, and Holland went silent. "I came back for you, and you were waiting for me, but I don’t trust you. This is a test."

_ God it feels like an honest goodbye _

Holland's mouth went dry and he reached out one shaking hand, taking the phone and swiping right to pick up the call just as the ringtone began to wind down. As he put the phone up to his ear, Athos pushed his chair back and stood up. "H-hello?"

"Hey.” Kell’s voice was quiet, insistent, oddly intense. “Are we on speaker?"

Athos stared at him, a slight smile on his face, and mouthed  _ tell him to come over. _

Holland shook his head. "N-no," He said out loud to Kell, his right hand trying to curl into a fist and failing as it could only close so far without pain. “We’re not.”

"Good. Listen to me, Holl. I know he’s there _ .  _ I’m right here, okay?" Holland just barely managed to get control over his expression, and Athos began to move slowly around the table towards him. “What do you need me to do?”

"Why did you c-c-c… come back?”  _ Damn it, Kell _ , he thought, and not for the first time. “I th-thought after what h-h-happened..."

Athos leaned over, catching Holland's eyes with his own. "He’s here? Invite him in," he said in a low whisper. "He killed Astrid."

There was a pause.

“Look, are you in danger right now? Does he have a weapon?”

“No. Yes. I don't know.”  _ He _ is  _ a weapon, he doesn’t need one. Everything around him is a weapon and he knows I won’t fight back by now. _

Athos moved to stand just behind him, right hand pressed palm-down against the back of Holland’s neck over the tattoo that had marked him as belonging to the Danes, beloved of them, Danskakarlek. He curled his fingers around the sides of his neck, pressing them in just a little until the skin gave way underneath it, dimpled under his touch. Goosebumps ran up his arms and Holland took in a breath, let it slowly out, listening to the way it shook. He could feel his heartbeat in his temples. 

Athos let his fingernails scratch at his skin and Holland let out a soft, involuntary sound in his throat.

"Holland?" Kell's voice in his ear. "You okay?"

Athos scratched again, and Holland kept himself quiet this time, but felt the shiver down through his skin and shifted uncomfortably. "F-fine," he stammered, cursing himself for how he could already hear it in his voice.

"Does  _ he _ know how to make you do that?" Athos asked in a whisper. "Bet he doesn't. I know  _ everywhere  _ you like."

"I don't know what to do," Kell said into his left ear as Athos leaned down and bit the shell of the right ear. Holland bit his lip hard enough to hurt to keep himself silent.

_ Me neither. _

Athos kissed the side of his head, murmuring, “Get him in here, I want to play with him,” into his wet hair. Then he straightened back up.

Which meant he didn’t hear when Kell said, in a very low voice, “I’m in your bedroom right now. Tell me what to do.”

Holland felt his grip on the phone tighten, just a little. He kept his face empty and blank, staring at the bookshelf along the wall, trying to focus on them. “Yes. I don’t know.”

Holland kept nothing in his apartment you could call a weapon. Even his kitchen knives had special safety covers that had to be manually unclipped.

He had no weapons in this apartment… except for one.

“Do you _ want _ me to help you?”

“Yes. You c-c-could come over and we c-cuh… could t-t-talk about it. About what you l-left, before."

_ Don’t come in, he’s going to kill you and he’s going to make me watch him do it. _

_ Please get in here and save me. _

“Good boy,” Athos said again, and Holland had forgotten how awful it felt to hear him say it. The cold hand on the back of his neck slowly warmed up with his body heat. 

"What I left?" Kell sounded confused.

"In my bedroom."

"Was he any good?," Athos asked, breathing the words against his ear. "Should we take him back in there? You could be Astrid this time, we could teach him to be you. Astrid's always with us in  _ spirit. _ "

Kell was saying something on the other end, and Holland fought through his fear and disgust to listen. "... but I've never… oh." A pause. " _ Oh.  _ Where?"

"I ended up j-j-j… just keeping it in m-my side table. Y-you can take it back with you."

“Hold on,” Kell said. “Just hold on, okay? Just keep him in the apartment.”

“Okay. S-see you in a b-b-b-” 

He heard Athos chuckle, a little, at his stammer and felt his face redden.

"It's going to be okay, Holland," Kell said softly. "Listen to my voice. Can you hear me? It's going to be all right." He hung up.

Holland set the phone back down on the table, feeling his stomach lurch, curling over himself until his forehead rested on the plastic coating on top of the table. “H-he’s coming,” He said without looking up.

_ Please please please. I can't do this again. If he takes me out of here I'm never leaving him again, I'll never even try. _

Athos slid his hand over his black hair, letting his fingers run through it. It was surprisingly soothing, and Holland didn't try to pull away or even move. "Good. We'll teach him what happens when you don't die when you're supposed to."

Athos curled his fingers and yanked Holland’s head back, jerking him upright, forcing him to look Athos right in the eyes. He caught his breath, felt the spike of fear and desire straight down his back. 

Athos loved pulling on his hair, and after a while Holland had started to like it, too.

"How could you want to see him, anyway?” Athos asked, sounding genuinely baffled and hurt. “He’s the reason my Astrid is gone. So are  _ you. _ ”

“I know,” Holland said, and his voice cracked a little. “I know I am. He just knows more than anyone else, it seemed…”  _ It seemed safe. _

“That’s fine. You were unhappy in the relationship,” Athos said thoughtfully, but he didn’t let go, and Holland swallowed against the strain in his neck muscles from being bent so far backwards in his chair. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, Holland, while I’ve been out in the woods. One of the things I thought about, out there, was that you were just not as happy as I thought you were with me.”

Holland had absolutely no idea how to answer that.

“I felt that we did a lot to accommodate you. You were a good driver, so we let you drive as often as you wanted. I bought you the books you wanted, whenever you asked. We bought you plenty of music to put on Astrid's iPod. I let you ramble on about whatever new nonsense you’d read in those books to me. We never made you help us with the bodies, and you and I used to talk, just lie there and talk, until nearly dawn.”

_ Talking is not even a little bit what we were doing,  _ Holland thought, but he kept his face steady and impassive and emotionless and laid his hands on the table, palms flat. Kell was in the bedroom, he thought, in there trying to figure out a way to help him. Trying to find the thing in the side table that Holland was terrified of and terrified to live without.

"I bought you leather so your wrists would stop bleeding," Athos murmured, and Holland felt the terror start his hands shaking and reminded himself, a little desperately, that those restraints were in an evidence locker in a police station somewhere. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

"I know. Thank you, Athos." He'd cried when he saw them but he'd been so grateful later, that at least one thing didn't hurt.

_ Gratitude is normal. Your mind adapts to ensure the best chances of survival. _

_ If gratitude is normal, loving him must be, too, right? Just a brain trick.  _

_ I shouldn't have lied to Dr. Rosa. I'd know, if I had told her, if this was normal, too. _

He just had to keep Athos here, and keep him talking.

“And despite everything we did to show how much we loved you, you kept trying to  _ run away _ . You kept trying to involve other  _ people _ in our relationship. It didn’t matter that we proved, over and over and over, that we loved you too much to let you go. You ran away anyway. You didn't even want to die with me, Holl, and that really  _ hurt _ . We were supposed to die together, to be with her."

"I know."

_ Begging, pleading, on his back with the ground hard and unyielding and his one arm wrapped around Athos's neck to hold him close, whispering all the darkest things they'd ever tricked him into thinking into his ear until he could feel Athos’s mood change, until he knew all those dark things he said, and did, there on the floor in the forest had bought Kell’s life. _

_ Holland had sort of wanted to die, right up until he looked death in the face and realized Kell would die too, and then he had wanted nothing more than to survive. _

"You know, I really trusted you, at the end, and you betrayed that trust.”

"I'm sorry," Holland said, numbly. "I'm sorry I broke your trust." The words came out calm and strong and even a little sincere.  No stammer.

"You know why you're lucky, Holl-Doll?"

There was a pause. Again, the right way to answer was obvious. Athos wanted to tell him, which meant he wanted Holland to want to know.

"Why?"

"Because I still love you. Because I have thought about you every day,  _ wept  _ over you. Over Astrid. Over how I thought we had a really good thing. You were trying  _ so hard.  _ I love you so much."

He swallowed.

Eight months, nine days, twenty hours.

_ I wish I could love you like he does,  _ Astrid whispered into the back of his mind.  _ He loves you so much, and I don't care about you at all. _

"I love you, too," he said, and he meant it. He heard Theon whine again in the bedroom, in a slightly different way, and reached up to touch Athos's face, running his fingers over the scruffy almost-beard there. "I love you. I waited for you."

"You still have my ring."

"Yes. I just wanted to save someone."

"I loved you enough to let you."

There was a rattle noise from the bedroom and when Athos's eyes moved that direction, Holland felt his heart drop. "Just the duh… d-dog. H-hey, I… what do we do now? Do you have a new car?"

"Yeah, I got one. We'll stay here for a couple of days… I want to remind you of a few things I think you've forgotten... and then once you heal up from  _ that _ and we've gotten rid of the Kell body, we'll get back on the road."

Finally,  _ finally _ Athos let go of his hair and Holland took a deep breath. "Okay. Can I take some f-food to my d-d-dog? I never f-fed him."

He didn't want Athos to know Theon's name. He didn't want that piece of information to belong to him, now, even though everything else about Holland did.

Even though he might be saying goodbye to Theon and to Kell, too, if this didn't work. 

"Sure." Athos smiled at him, pure and loving, and moved away. "I'm sure as fuck not helping you. Dogs have never liked me."

_ Of course not,  _ Holland thought, but didn't dare say out loud. He moved over the cabinet, scooping up the dog food into the measuring cup he kept for it as loudly as he could, letting the food rattle around in the cup.

Athos watched him moving around the tiny apartment, and he could feel his eyes like the weight of a hand on his back. 

Carrying the cup, he moved to the bedroom door. "Hey, buddy," he said softly. Theon whined from the other side. "I got dinner for you."

He heard tentative scratching at the door, and opened it just the slightest crack. Theon immediately tried to jam his nose into the space to push his way out.

"No, buddy, N-no," Holland soothed. "You h-have to stay in here or he'll hurt you."

He never heard Athos move, but felt the  _ weight  _ of him behind him just as Theon began to snarl and growl again, trying to force his narrow head and broad shoulders through the door even harder.

Athos leaned over him, hands curling around his shoulders, resting his chin to the left side of his face was touching Holland's right. "See? Dogs always hate me."

_ No fucking wonder, dogs can tell what you are. _

Holland saw the slightest bit of red hair in the darkness of his room. Athos kissed the side of his head, then down to his ear, then to the place where his neck met his shoulder, biting down gently. Holland shivered, and felt his body light up, ready again, always ready for them to touch him.

Theon snapped, trying to get at Athos's legs, and Holland grabbed him hard by the collar to hold him still. He could see, along the floor, the shifting of shadows as Kell moved.

"Get down," Kell said out loud, and when Athos looked up in surprise, Holland dropped himself like a rock to the floor, grabbing Theon around the shoulders and chest to hold him down, too.

Kell, nearly invisible in the darkness of the room, moved up so a stripe of light hit his face and lit one blue eye and his pale skin. He put the handgun, that Holland had bought and loaded and then never once so much as picked up again, up to Athos's face. His expression was calm but the warm blue eyes were too wide, the whites showing all around them. 

Holland's hands had shook with fear even just holding the thing, but Kell's grip was steady. This was not the first time Kell Maresh had held a gun up to someone's eyes.  "Back away from him," Kell said, quietly. "I already called the cops."

"But I love him _ ,"  _ Athos said, almost plaintively. "Did you  _ steal him from me? _ " 

"I can't steal him, that's not how it works," Kell snapped. "Put your hands up so we can wait for the cops."

"The cops? Oh, fuck you. Holland is _mine. _Give me your fucking gun, you little shit-" When he went to reach out as if to grab it away, Kell calmly pulled the trigger.

_ No, don't go,  _ Holland thought, and also  _ yes, thank God. _

There was a flash, almost, and the loudest fucking sound Holland had ever heard so close to his own body, a noise he  _ felt  _ ripple through him and an ache in his ears and his head, before he heard the muffled sound of Athos's body thumping to the floor and smelled blood in the air again.

Blood, and worse.

Holland closed his eyes as tightly as he could, counting heartbeats, holding Theon as the dog yipped and whined and howled at the pain of the gunshot noise.

_ One… two… three... _

"Don't look at him," Kell said, his face white as a moon, still standing in the dark bedroom with only a little light on his face from the lamp behind them. "Don't, okay? Just look at Theon. Don't look at him. Oh, shit, gonna throw up in a second. Ugh. Don't look."

Holland closed his eyes. In the distance, he heard the sound of sirens, layering over each other.

"How the  _ fuck _ are the cops this slow?" Kell asked, and  _ now  _ his hands began to tremble as he carefully put the safety back on. "I called them before I ever came up your fire escape."

"Y-you came back," Holland said, feeling Theon's whole-body shakes against him, tightening his grip. Theon licked at his face, and Holland took a deep breath. "You came  _ back  _ after…" 

"Yeah," Kell said, listening to the sirens growing closer. "I did." He stepped out and around Holland, putting the gun carefully into a trash can and setting it in the center of the room. "I was a dick, but you're my friend. Did you really think I wouldn't come back to apologize?"

_ Yeah,  _ Holland thought.  _ I really did.  _

Then Kell seemed to realize what he had just done and ran, stumbling, to the kitchen. He threw up into the kitchen sink, holding onto it with white knuckles as he leaned over, and Holland didn't look, just kept himself right where he was, swallowing against the sound of Kell losing everything he’d eaten.

"H-h-how do you know how t-to-"

"People broke into our house when I was in high school," Kell said into the sink, and threw up again. He gasped a little, pouring water into a glass, trying to drink it only to heave the water back up, too. "They tried to hold my little brother for ransom and didn’t know I was in the house. I shot someone with Dad’s gun and it fucked me up. I took weapons training after that."

By the time the cops came up the steps, he was still sitting on the ground holding Theon, Kell had moved over to crouch next to him with an arm around him, and he never looked at what Kell reassured him was a bloody fucking mess on the floor at all.

He wanted to, but he didn’t, and so he kept in his mind what Athos looked like as a person, as someone he had hated and loved, and not as a body.

He didn't even cry until the next day, when Kell led him out of the police station after half a day of new rounds of interviews, and he realized he couldn't go back home.  It was a crime scene and there would be so much blood, and once again he had no clue where to go. 

He sat down on the steps outside the station and sobbed, Theon's warm body leaning against him, because they were gone and he had no one left who loved him.

_ There was no one left but them, and they were gone. _

Then Kell asked him if he wanted to stay with him for a few days until he bought a place, since he was fairly sure Maxim would be willing to pay to keep  _ this  _ out of the news, too.

"I don't have anyone," Holland said in a thick, wavering voice. "Everyone is dead."

"You have me," Kell said, and sat down next to him. After a long pause, Holland slowly leaned against Kell, arms around his knees, Theon on the other side. "I came back, and I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

Someone was humming just outside the room.

Holland woke up to it, a sound he couldn't quite place, and light streaming in through the blinds, in a small room with empty beige walls.

He was lying on his side, waiting sleepily for Athos to either open up the cuffs or decide to do something else before he let him up. Waiting to hear his low, rough-voiced  _ good morning  _ or feel a hand between his legs or  _ did you want to see the video I took of you sleeping last night  _ or any of the usual ways Holland was shown that his bad luck would never, ever run out.

Holland struggled to swim up from sleep, still waiting to hear Athos’s voice, trying to figure out the hum. Was Athos singing in the shower? Was it someone out in the hallway outside the door?

_ Hey, Holl, time to wake up, I want you now. _

Theon took a deep breath and sighed, the big Doberman Pinscher curled up on the other side of the bed shifting around, and reality filtered in. 

Athos and Astrid Dane were both dead.

Weren't they?

"Hey, Theon," He said softly, without opening his eyes. Theon huffed and whined gently.

"What's wrong?"

There was a pause, and he felt the bed give a little as Theon army-crawled up close on his belly and gently touched Holland's right palm with his cold, wet nose.

Holland's hands were crossed at the wrists behind his back, the way the cuffs had held them each night, first the handcuffs Astrid had customized and then the green leather that had at least been soft against his skin. 

Theon whined and nudged at his hand again, harder this time.

"Right. Sorry, buddy." He took a breath, pulling his wrists apart and rolling into his back, and Theon leaned his narrow, sleekly pointed head in to rest it on Holland's chest. Holland slid his right arm around and over the dog’s warm body, patting his side, fingers splayed unnaturally wide as always. "Thanks." 

Theon looked sideways up towards his face and licked at his chops meaningfully.

"I  _ know _ . Just give me a minute and we'll get up and get some breakfast."

He didn’t stammer with Theon - and not Kell Maresh any longer, either.

_ Wake up, baby. Make me some coffee. Astrid got Bojangles, get my sandwich. _

Holland jumped, Athos’s voice so close in his ear, a little rough-edged with sleep still, and he could almost feel the arm around his shoulders. He sat up, accidentally dislodging Theon, who looked up at him with a sudden absolute seriousness, going from languid and relaxed to tense and watchful in a second, ears standing right up off his head, warm brown eyes focused, head tilting just a little. “Make coffee…? I-I c-can do th-that…"

Wait, where was he? Was he in the hotel? Was it time to get up? 

_ Get your clothes off, Holl-Doll, I want you now. You're ready, right? You're always ready. _

"I-I can be r-ready, Athos." Holland’s hands went to the hem of the loose blue T-shirt he was wearing to sleep in and he started to pull it off without thinking, before Theon let out the softest, deepest little woof of sound, and he paused, staring off into space.

Where was he? Was there a dog in the hotel? But Athos hated dogs...

Theon put a paw on Holland’s leg, bumping against the side of his head with the top of his own, hard enough to knock Holland a little to the side, to knock the voice away. Holland scratched behind his ears the way he liked, watching Theon's eyes close and his tongue loll out just a little, relaxing again when Holland's heart rate slowed back down.. “Right. I know. I know he’s not really there.”

Then, because no one was here to tell him he shouldn’t say it or even think it, he leaned over and whispered into Theon’s ear, “I miss him."

Theon looked into his eyes, utterly without judgement, and sniffed. He sighed, putting a hand up over his face, and Theon sighed back at him, in the exact same tone, cocking his head to one side with his ears pointing straight up.

"I make that noise too much, huh? I’ve taught you to do it.”

Theon slowly blinked and then licked his chops again. He wiggled a little closer, and licked at the corner of Holland's mouth.

There was a noise out in the apartment, the sound of ceramics rattling together, the closing of a cabinet door. Theon looked that way, then slowly looked back. When he didn't tense or show nervousness, Holland's mind finally caught up and he realized what the sound was. 

The humming continued, and Holland swung his legs out of bed, getting slowly to his feet. Theon jumped down, stub of a tail wagging happily, and stood in the doorway looking back at him.

"Hey, Theon, is Holland up?" Kell Maresh's voice called.

Theon  _ woofed,  _ happily.

"Thought I heard him in there. Want some breakfast, buddy?'

Theon all but scrambled to get to the kitchen, dancing on his paws as he went.

Kell looked up when Holland came out the door. "Morning, Holl. Do you want milk in your coffee? I made you eggs, too."

This wasn’t a hotel room. It was a one-bedroom apartment, half of a duplex, and it was grimy, but it was  _ his _ . Unlike the apartment Athos had died in, he'd bought this place outright.

It had its good points. It was even closer to the bay, his neighbors didn’t mind Theon, and Holland almost never left it except for more interviews with cops putting together an even longer trail of murders (Astrid, he thought, would have been thrilled to discover she and Athos were now in the top 10 serial killers in history), his doctors’ and therapist’s appointments…  _ and _ since it was his, Kell Maresh basically lived on his couch now and no one could say a word.

There was only one bed, and Holland never asked him to come into it, and he might never be able to. But that wasn't why Kell was here.

Kell was here for  _ him. _

He slept here nearly every night and Holland had finally had to admit he really  _ wasn't _ going anywhere. Kell fucking Maresh, a body that hadn’t known it was dead yet, the only surviving intended murder victim of the Danes besides Holland himself, and Holland’s current only living friend. 

He moved out to the kitchen, left leg dragging only a little behind the right, and glanced over at the living room space to find Kell had already folded his blankets from the night before and stacked them on the couch on top of his pillow. He was in a plain white T-shirt and red flannel PJ pants, pouring coffee from a French press he'd brought over a couple of weeks ago into a red mug and a white one, setting them gently on Holland's unstable little kitchen table. After a second, he put down a plate of scrambled eggs, too, with strips of cheese on top to make a smiley face.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Holland said flatly when he saw it.

"You're _welcome," _Kell replied with surprising cheer. "Did you want milk for the coffee? Sugar?"

"No, black is fine," Holland said, moving to feed Theon, who devoured his breakfast with enthusiasm. Kell passed him on his way to the fridge and brushed a hand across his back, casually, without expectation, and Holland counted his heartbeats as they stayed steady and calm.

_ One… two… three… four. _

Somehow, they'd worked this out without talking about it, that Holland needed someone to touch him but could never, ever have asked. That Kell could hug him, or do things like this, and Holland  _ needed _ it as much as he needed to breathe. That he needed it to be platonic, to not mean anything more than _ this will make you feel better and I care how you feel and what you want. _

Someone who did not look at him and tell him to take his clothes off. Even if sometimes Holland thought he might want that one day, too. Maybe. 

Holland pulled out a chair and sat down, smiling a little. Kell put the red mug down in front of him (along with the two pills Holland took in the morning) and took the white one for himself. 

"How'd you sleep?" Kell asked. His hair was still mashed halfway down on one side and stuck up on the other and Holland thought about touching it, smoothing it down. He didn't - but that he  _ thought _ about it and wasn't afraid was what mattered.

"Good," Holland said, swallowing the pills dry, and took a sip of coffee. "Slept right through."

"No nightmares?" The question was asked casually, but a question like that never really  _ was  _ casual, not for him.

Holland met Kell's eyes as Theon took up his place lying next to Holland's feet, utterly relaxed, letting his chin rest on Holland's bare foot.

"No nightmares, Kell. God's truth. Just a little fucked up this morning. What… what about you?"

"Mmmn, a few. Not important. Other than dreaming about your fucking  _ snoring,  _ I was fine." Kell grinned, a flash of white teeth, and Holland did not see Astrid or Athos at all in his blue eyes any longer.

Five months and three days since Athos came back, and loved him, and died, all in one night.

Five months since he'd stopped lying to his therapist, and he had three pill bottles sitting on the kitchen counter (and fewer panic attacks and_ visual disturbances _and he'd even made it through a trip to the mall to buy new clothing) to prove it.

Four months since Kell Maresh had started showing up to make him coffee and buy him food and refuse to leave him alone two or three or even sometimes five days a week, sleeping on the couch every time he came over, a visible living person always between Holland and the front door with six locks. 

Two months since they had come to their wordless agreement, that Kell should touch him as long as he didn't want anything more than that, not until he was ready, even though he might never be ready again.

One month since he had agreed to go to rehab for his knee.

Two weeks since they had had his first scheduled appointment with a surgical team to talk about putting a bunch of pins in his hand and getting back, the doctor had said, at least 50% more function. He'd brought Kell with him, and he was pretty sure the surgical team thought they were  _ together.  _ Which they might be. Holland had no idea, at this point, how to tell.

One week since he'd taken a shower without breaking down into tears for the first time. 

It took time, and all of it was healing.

Holland slept through the night, as long as Kell was sleeping out on the couch. The nights he was elsewhere, up at the bar that Holland was too scared to return to or out doing whatever it was he did with his life, Holland sat up with Theon until 3 or 4 in the morning reading the books his therapist gave him on trauma and wishing Kell was here.

Not that he would ever have admitted it out loud.

"You want to go down to the beach later?" Kell asked, tilting his head.

Holland looked down at Theon, who looked back up at him. His stub tail started to wag. Holland felt his shirt catch just slightly on the collarbone piercing, the only one left. He rubbed at the tattoo on the back of his neck as he thought - he couldn't get rid of that, either.

He still missed them too much to lose everything that reminded him of them.

He still wore the ring, too, and Kell never said a word about it. 

He might never take off the ring.

"Sure. That sounds great."

Five months and three days, and Holland could go to the beach whenever he wanted without fear, and Kell Maresh always asked him what he  _ wanted _ , first.

Kell put his hand on the table, about halfway across, and after a second Holland laid his bad right hand over it.

It was his decision. His choice.

After a second, Kell grinned at him, and Holland smiled back, just because he wanted to, not because Kell expected it.

Kell flipped his hand over, and Holland held onto it. Just a touch, a reminder someone was here, someone who wanted nothing from him that he did not want himself.

He counted heartbeats, slow, steady, and calm.

_ One… two… three… four… five. _

Theon let out a soft, contented sigh.

He hoped this run of good luck never ran out.


	32. Trying Very Hard to Be Good (Serial Killer Gap Year)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the apparently endless month of writing in these AUs. I still have a few ideas that I've been fiddling with and decided to keep working on them and posting them until I run out! First, I have two more Serial Killer Gap Year pieces - this first one takes place about two years into Holland's captivity. It's... very, very dark, so you have 100% been warned. But the next SKGY bit is fluffier, I swear.
> 
> This is real dark, but just remember how it all turns out in the end. It's fiiiiine.

He's not sure why tonight is so hard.

It’s not any particular anniversary or holiday, but they’ve gotten a nicer hotel room than they usually do, the kind where it’s a two-room suite with a half-wall to separate the king-sized bed from the sofa-bed that folds out and TV ‘sitting’ area. The front desk manager hadn’t even blinked at their fake IDs, the credit card that Holland thinks it’s safer just to not ask about.

He didn't ask any questions, and Holland wonders which one of the Danes the man at the desk thought he was with. There's a way people look at him, with his face full of metal and the shadows under his eyes and the thin white t-shirt and old jeans, the hair they make him cut himself, and the desk manager had that look.  _ Are they paying you by the hour? _ was written in a polite sneer on his face.

Holland had felt a wild urge to lean over, slam his palm down, and scream that it's  _ both of them, they're not paying me, I'm trapped, they have killed so many people, please help me, this isn’t what I want.  _ But he kept his mouth shut. 

He always keeps his mouth shut.

The room is nice, and the view is nicer, but tonight he falls hard, and he doesn’t know why.

This isn't the worst night with them, not by a long shot. The worst nights, in his memories, are always the first few days. Astrid ground up pills to put in the water he drank, kept him in his own dark room, and all he remembers is blurry pain and Athos looking up at one point to say to Astrid,  _ what if we took him with us? _

Those had been the worst nights, and he tries not to think about them. It's been two years, and it's easier to give in than to keep trying to hold onto himself. Mostly he tries to think about  _ them,  _ what will keep them happy, what will get him to the next day of the same, and the next.

Mostly, he erases himself in their hands, smiles for Athos, suffers for Astrid, and when they want him to he asks for more. 

Astrid doesn't really care, and she is cleaner in his mind, written in ice, easier to understand. He is a thing to her, a means to relieve stress and nothing more. He belongs to her brother and therefore to her, but he can handle her disinterested advances better than Athos's genuine devotion.

_ Athos _ always wants him to act like this is something other than it is, wants him to beg for it, to fit himself into whatever Athos wants him to be. Mostly, he does; it’s easier that way.

He drowns himself in Astrid's ever-present alcohol, although they trust him enough now not to force it down his throat. He loses himself in the way they feel on him and in him, and he pretends he is not being remade. He remembers love being better than this, but it's faded - Talya’s eyes and her hair and her laughter, even the look on her face when their relationship ended, but all of that is slowly overwritten by a world built entirely on  _ them. _

Holland doesn’t cry any longer - not since last Christmas. He can’t stand the idea of Athos taking any more videos of it, whispering  _ you're so pretty when you look like this,  _ staring and staring with wide, fascinated eyes _ .  _

Athos thinks Holland doesn't wake up when he watches the videos at night.

Coming out of a dream to hear your own voice sobbing brokenly out of the cell phone of the man who made it happen is a surreal experience, and Holland wonders how many other people in the world share it, and honestly, that would make one hell of a support group.

Tonight, though, it’s not that he cries. Instead, he lets himself get buried in it, his arms around Athos's neck and the other man's back against the hotel bed's headboard. He’s got the green leather on his wrists and ankles and his neck, hooked up to nothing, just  _ there _ . He can’t think of any time that’s ever happened before. 

He stops trying to keep himself apart and instead he drowns in ice-blue eyes, tangles his bad hand in white-blond hair, doesn't even _ try _ to be quiet.

Astrid is watching TV out on the sofa as though he isn't even here, as though this isn't even happening. She is watching, with great fascination, a movie about a lawyer and the devil, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with popcorn in her lap. The lawyer is arguing with the devil on the television, the lawyer’s terrible southern accent the background to Athos's murmured words and his cold hands and Holland's audible desperation, and Astrid never looks back at them at all. Holland is so inhuman to her that she never even minds being in the room, it doesn’t even count.

Athos doesn't notice the way he shakes at first, and really neither does Holland - it's too wrapped up in a mind that isn't thinking or feeling anything but the way the hotel sheets feel under his knees as he moves and the way Athos's skin warms the longer they touch, fingers tangled in his black hair, yanking his head back hard, in the way his own voice sounds inside his head calling out the name of someone he hates so much. 

He thinks at first the shaking is just from the moment, from how good it is, how well Athos knows every part of him but his mind.

Astrid had been first, and she is all angles and orders and distance, thank God for her distance, he's half in love with her just for that - but it's Athos who frightens him more, because it's Athos who murmurs, "You can, now, you can, you're  _ so _ good, I love you, you’re trying so hard, go ahead," and he does, because it's what Athos wants, because he said to, because he is trying.

It’s that realization, finally sinking in as it’s over and Holland can no longer hide from himself, that starts the shaking. By the time Athos disentangles and stands up, Holland is shaking too hard to move, curling up in the bed, his eyes wide and nearly sightless. He wants to cry but he can't remember how and he’s suddenly _e_ _ xhausted,  _ weighed down by a fear he can’t name or control.

There's some time where Athos goes into the bathroom for a towel and to clean up, and when he comes back he tosses the towel, pristine hotel white, at Holland and he can't move, his hands won't catch the soft fabric. He can't do anything but think,  _ I am trying so hard,  _ and be terrified of it.

"Holland…?" Athos reaches out to touch his face and he flinches back and away from it. His fingertips feel numb, but cold, like he's had his hands on a block of ice, and he holds them up in front of his face and watches them tremble but he can't feel them at all. “What’s wrong?”

Astrid looks over her shoulder at the tone Athos uses, curious. She and Holland meet eyes, just for a moment, and then she snorts. "Sub drop," she says flatly, and turns back to the TV. 

"What the fuck is that?" Athos asks, still frowning down at Holland, who doesn't dare to try and look up. “He’s so pale. Is he sick?”

"No, dumbass,” Astrid says with dry affection. “It means you just had a pretty great fuck, I’d say.”

“I mean,  _ I  _ thought so,” Athos says with a smile, but it fades when he looks over at Holland, who just drops his head between his knees and closes his eyes. He’s too tired to even try to protest, because honestly, it really  _ had _ been, probably the best so far, and he’s never felt worse. “But just look at him, he’s  _ shaking _ .” He goes to touch Holland’s shoulders and he pulls away, curls himself up tighter.

“Don’t,” Holland whispers, but they never listen to him. 

“Sub drop’s an endorphin crash, sometimes it brings on the shakes," Astrid says without looking away from the movie. “Some of my guys got the shakes, before.” She picks up a pack of cigarettes and lights one, smiling to herself at the NO SMOKING sign clearly posted over on the wall, takes a long drag. "It’s normal, happens sometimes when the Holland in this particular scenario, whoever he or she may be, gets a little _ too _ into it. Lose yourself in the moment, Holl-Doll?”

Holland doesn’t bother to say anything. She’s been in the hotel room the whole time, she  _ knows  _ the answer. Probably so do whatever poor bastards had the misfortune to get the room on the other side of the wall.

“So… what do I  _ do _ about it?” Athos rests a hand on his head, like he’s a  _ dog  _ scared of a thunderstorm, and he doesn’t pull away, but only because the idea of pulling away seems like just too much effort. Holland isn’t sure what’s worse - the way he feels tired and shaky and numb and sort of nauseous, or the actual, honest-to-God worry in Athos’s voice.

How can someone worry about you like this and still kill anyone who might want to help?

Astrid groans, turning around to throw a handful of popcorn at Athos, who catches one kernel in mid-air and throws it right back. “Damn it, Athos, this movie is just playing on cable, it’s not like I can  _ pause _ it. Can you stop asking questions? The big speech is about to start!”

“Astrid, you’ve seen this movie at least eleven times, you’ve probably got Pacino’s monologue memorized by now. Help me with this!”

“Ugh. Fine. Seriously, though, find this newfangled thing called  _ the internet  _ and handle it yourself next time.” Astrid pushes herself to her feet, abandoning the bowl of popcorn to walk over. She and Athos stand side-by-side, looking down at Holland as he blinks slowly up at them from behind the dubious safety of his hair and his knees and his arms.

With their arms crossed and long hair pulled into low buns at the nape of their necks, they look nearly identical. Except for the fact that Astrid is obviously female (and wearing a tank top and pajama shorts) and Athos just as obviously  _ isn’t _ (and is currently wearing a towel around his waist and nothing else), it would have been difficult to tell them apart. There are times, when they are both with him, that he forgets they're even two people. “You could… hug him? I guess?”

“Oh god,” Holland mumbles, putting his hands up over his face. 

“Your best advice is to  _ hug him?”  _

"Who gives a shit how he feels, Athos? He's just a dick and a tongue ring, not a  _ person _ . He's not one of  _ us _ . My  _ best  _ advice is to stop giving a damn, come eat popcorn with me, and let him sit here and pout until he wants to get up all on his own. Sub drop doesn’t last forever, and it’s not like I give a damn even if it does, he’ll still do what he’s told.” Holland watches her slowly lean to one side, until she’s resting her side against her twin’s, letting her head tilt until it rests on his shoulder.  _ They are monsters _ , Holland thinks. He belongs to monsters.

“What if I  _ want _ to help?” Athos asks the question in a voice that is slightly shy and hesitant, and Astrid glances up at him, her sharp features softening and her eyes going warm in an expression Holland has only ever seen her make for her brother. “What if I  _ want _ him to feel better? He's  _ mine _ , he's my responsibility… part of being in a relationship is taking care of each other, Astrid, you know that. You can’t just let a pet suffer without it being for a good reason.” 

Athos smiles at him, and instinctive self-preservation nearly has him smile back, but he just… can’t, not right now, not hearing the way Athos can twist even concern for his well-being into something that humiliates him.

"... You're thinking about the damn raccoon again, aren't you."

"No, I'm not. I'm just thinking about  _ him. _ We made a  _ commitment, _ Astrid.”

“Well, if it means that much to you…”

“It does.”

“Fine,” She says, after a moment’s pause, and even her voice is soft and sweet. She could fool people, out in the world, with a voice like that. She could have them convinced she is as human as anyone else, that she can feel compassion. Astrid sees nothing and no one in the world as worth her time but Athos, though, and he never hears her use that voice with anyone but him. “Run the bath and get him into it, sit with him for a while. I’ll go order some delivery food, and we’ll take care of him.”

“We?” Athos looks down at her, surprised, and she smiles back up at him, linking her arm briefly with his, and it’s a little like being trapped in the world’s weirdest Norman Rockwell painting.

“We,” Astrid says a little firmly, patting his arm with her hand. “Holl’s with both of us, right?”

_ This is not a relationship, you are my goddamn rapists.  _   


"Right. Everything that belongs to one of us belongs to us both.”

_ Why didn’t you kill me two years ago?  _

“Exactly. So we’ll  _ both _ take care of him. When you’re done with the bath, we’ll eat, and then he can sit between us on the couch and we’ll see if Shawshank Redemption is on somewhere, he loves that movie.”

_ What was special about me that Ros did not have? _

“Good idea. Thanks, Astrid.”

_ What made you look at me and think you were falling in love? Is it something I can cut out of myself?  _

“Hey, what are big sisters for?” There’s a pause, while Astrid thinks it over. “You run the bath, I’ll handle food. You want Vietnamese? Mexican? I’m kind of craving something spicy, I love spicy food after a night with Holl-Doll.”

“Well, shouldn’t we ask him what  _ he _ wants? He’s the reason we’re ordering out at all." Athos disengages from Astrid, slides a hand across his shoulders, and Holland shakes a little harder at the touch of his hand.

_ You are not my boyfriend, or my partner, or my girlfriend, or whatever you think you are to me.  _

_ This is not love. _

Astrid frowns and looks back at him, her eyes narrowing a little, and Holland tries to curl himself up smaller and stop the run of rebellious thoughts, worrying that she can somehow read them on his face. “Hm. What do  _ you _ want, then, Holl?” Her words are casual enough, but the look on her face says,  _ choose wisely. _

Athos holds out a hand to him, and he knows better than to do anything but take it. His hand is still trembling when he does. Athos’s grip is surprisingly warm, as if he’s still lit with Holland’s body heat, as if he stole it from him like a vampire drinking blood. Athos pulls him off the bed and he lets him put his free hand on his shoulder to steady him when his bad knee pops oddly and shoots pain up his thigh into his hip, making him hiss through his teeth.

"Is Korean okay?” He asks the carpeted floor, because he can’t stand the idea of meeting either of their gazes if it isn’t. 

Astrid is silent for a long time, and Holland feels like she and Athos are talking, somehow, without words. Finally, he watches her feet turn and pad away from him, walking back over to the sofa where she’s left her burner phone. They get new phones whenever they switch up cars. “That works. I’ll order for you, you never pick the right things anyway."

He hasn’t chosen his own food, beyond gas station potato chips, in a very long time. They're better at picking food out than he is, so he mostly doesn't mind.

_ Yes, I do. Or I used to. You’re echoing their thoughts again, not your own. _

What  _ are _ his own thoughts? Holland can’t really separate them sometimes.

Athos guides him to the bathroom like he's a small child or an old man, and the exhaustion drags at his feet, slows him down. 

The hotel really  _ is  _ nice, the kind with a huge bathtub set into the floor  _ and  _ a glass-encased shower, well-lit with warm marbled tile everywhere you look. He can't think of why they would have spent the money - it's not a holiday, there's nothing special about this week. But they've been here two nights and Astrid says they're here for one more, that the last body had enough money to cover this hotel for two full weeks if they wanted.

Holland doesn’t remember the last body at all, but that’s fine, that’s better. It’s easier when he doesn’t remember them, when they’re just a story Athos and Astrid laugh about and not an actual human who had to die to keep them moving on the road, to keep them in Takis and beer and Astrid looking at the road ahead with a small, smug smile in some stolen car while Athos makes him-

_ This is not a relationship. _

Athos uses the dial on the wall to keep the lights in the bathroom dim and warm, moving to the large square-shaped tub set in the floor to turn on the water. Holland closes his eyes at the rush of sound; he  _ hates  _ the sound of hotel showers, now, but bathtubs aren't so bad. There’s a difference, the bathtub sound is deeper and thunders and it doesn’t sound like screaming at all.

Athos unfastens the green leather, one by one, starting with his neck, then each wrist, and finally his ankles. He does it with reverence, as though simply freeing Holland from the reminder that he is always restrained, one way or another, is a gift. Holland has never taken them off of himself; he isn’t allowed. He’s not sure he even could, if his fingers would even consent to the motion.

_ You are a fucking monster and you do not love me. _

"Get in," Athos says, but his voice is still gentle and caring. You could almost believe it was a request and not an order. Holland uses Athos’s hand to balance, so he can avoid putting too much weight on his bad knee, and when his grip tightens on Athos’s hand he can see the smile widen on the other man’s face, enjoying his dependence, his  _ need  _ to be helped.

The water is scalding hot and after a moment his knee starts to feel better, and Holland settles himself, trying to relax and let the water rise and fill the tub. At first he thinks he can finally settle, but then Athos drops the towel and gets in alongside him and Holland swallows, feeling every muscle freeze at once.

_ You are a rapist and a murderer, we have left a trail of bodies everywhere we have gone. I am a victim, I am not a partner. I am not an accomplice. I am not- _

“Stop being so fucking  _ tense _ ,” Athos snaps, hitting him across the back of the head with casual aggression, and Holland’s head jerks forward hard, nearly throwing him face-first into the water. He straightens back up, forcing his muscles to relax, one by one, closing his eyes and focusing on following orders, on the feeling. Athos slides an arm around his shoulders and it’s awful but also… it’s not so bad.

It’s not like he isn’t used to it by now, after all.

“I’m… sorry,” Athos says, softly, just barely louder than the sound of the running water, and Holland wants to bark out a bitter laugh. After two years and Ros's death and a ruined life, after a broken hand and a bashed-in knee, after all the black eyes and bruises he’s been hiding, after night after night of being the thing they've brought along for the ride, after turning him into a pet they  _ use  _ and hurt over and over,  _ this  _ is what Athos is sorry for?

_ Why do you act like this is anything real? _

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like this,” Athos says with a sincerity that Holland can't stand. 

_ Yes, you did. You have spent years turning me into this. _

In the other room, Astrid has finished her call and returned to the TV and Holland hears her, faintly: “Oh god damn it, I missed the speech.”

He tightens his arm around Holland, pulling him even closer, and Holland has to breathe, carefully, in through his mouth and out through his nose to keep himself relaxed. “I really am sorry… although I guess it’s kind of a compliment to me, isn’t it? It was  _ that good. _ ”

_ Please stop talking. _

_ God, yes, it was good. _

_ I fucking hate you. _

“Mmmn,” Holland says, because there’s a pause and he feels like he  _ should  _ say something but also he’s a little afraid that he’s going to start screaming obscenities if he opens his mouth. The water continues to cascade from the faucet and they sit in silence for a while. The hot water is soothing in and of itself, and even the solidity of Athos isn’t so bad, when he forgets who he is and why he’s there. The shivery, shaking feeling slowly starts to subside, leaving only the exhaustion in its place.

“Tomorrow,” Athos says, “we’ll go get coffee, just the two of us. On a date, yeah? For breakfast? Astrid would probably like the chance to sleep in a little bit.”

_ Taking your captive out for coffee is not a date. I wish I had the courage to pass the cashier a note telling her I need help, but I can't risk all the people he might kill. _

_ I have to tell someone I need help, but when is one of them not right there breathing down my neck? _

“That sounds nice, thank you,” Holland replies, hiding his angry thoughts behind an empty face and an empty voice. He _ feels _ empty; like Athos has hollowed him out, and Astrid sharpened the edges left in him into knives, and all he has left are new ways to hurt himself. 

“I love you so much,” Athos murmurs into his hair. They’re silent, again, because Holland can’t bring himself to say it but he knows Athos is waiting to hear it and in the end, it’s just a matter of how long it takes before he gives in.

Instead, Athos stays silent until the water is up to their chests, and then he reaches over to turn it off. They can hear a new movie on the TV, coming in faintly through the open door, hear Astrid arguing with the protagonist as though she’d be able to hear her. “Seriously, you stupid bitches, don’t fight  _ each other,  _ kill the asshole cheating on you both! This is why women aren’t in charge in more places, we’re just not willing enough to  _ kill people  _ to fix our problems.” She smacks her hands together in emphasis. “Murder. Solves.  _ Problems!” _

“It was too much tonight, huh?” Athos asks, and Holland forgets for a second who he’s talking to and nods. The arm around him tightens, and Athos pulls him over so his back is to Athos’s chest in the water. “Lean your head back on my shoulder,” He murmurs into his ear, and Holland swallows.

Sometimes he feels like he’s compelled and he can’t resist and at least then he feels better, stronger, because it’s not his fault. Other times he does what he’s told because it’s easier, it’s just easier - he could fight it but he doesn’t.    


Those times are when he feels guilty, and wrong, and like he’s turning into them, piece by piece, day by day, year by year.

"Does your knee hurt? You were putting a lot of weight on it for a while." 

He nods again, and Athos’s hand slides down his arm, over his chest, and eventually finds his bad knee, where he starts to rub his thumb in circles, pressing down just a little. The bad knee aches and aches and then something  _ shifts  _ under the careful motion of Athos’s thumb and the pain is gone. Holland lets out a soft, relieved breath, turning so his forehead rests against the side of Athos’s neck, and for a moment he feels so much better.

“Thank you,” He says, softly, sincerely, and even though his eyes are closed and he’s got his head buried against Athos, he can  _ feel  _ his smile.

_ This is not a relationship,  _ half of his brain insists, while the other half whispers plaintively,  _ but isn’t it? _

Athos had been the one to raise the hammer that broke his knee. Athos is the one to make the pain fade now. 

“I’ll be nicer, next time,” Athos says in a rumble of voice he can feel more than hear, and Holland fights to keep the frown off his face, to stay empty and unreadable.

_ The problem is that you were  _ too  _ nice, it was  _ too _ good, and for a second I didn’t want to be anywhere else but here. _

“You can do whatever you want,” Holland says out loud, listening to Astrid yelling at the TV, thinking about how you could get used to anything, in the end, and he’s kind of getting used to this. "You do whatever you want anyway."

"It's what you want, too. You just don't know it all the time, that's why we have to remind you. You make too many wrong choices, on your own." Athos slides arms around him and he could stay like this for hours, really, if the water stayed warm. "You're better with us. You didn't have anything before."

"I had a job, and a friend…"

"You don't need a friend. You don't need a  _ job.  _ You need  _ us.  _ Astrid and I are all you'll ever need." 

Holland closes his eyes and tries not to listen, but later he knows he'll hear these words, too, in his head like his own thoughts that he'll have to pick apart somehow, remember which are his and which are theirs and every day it's harder to tell.

He's so tired that it feels like too much work to care.

He doesn't really mind having someone to lean back against, right now it doesn’t even matter that it’s Athos. Athos’s hair brushes against his cheek as the other man shifts and it feels good, comfortable, and he could sleep here, really, just like this.

Athos kisses his hair, and he thinks about how  _ good _ it felt to have Athos’s fingers in it pulling his head back, and shivers, afraid of himself and of what happens when their voices are in his ear and his head for so long. 

Athos mistakes the shiver for something else and says with a hint of humor, “Not yet, you need to feel better first. We’re so good together, aren’t we?”

"Yes," he says woodenly, just to fill the space where Athos waits for an answer.

_ This is not love. Love doesn't kill.  _

_ But he didn't kill  _ me,  _ and he doesn't want to, and isn't that as close as they can get? _

The phone on the side table by the desk rings, and Astrid goes to answer it, then leaves, calling over her shoulder that she’s going downstairs to pick up the food, grabbing cash. “Oh, this one has blood on it,” She mutters, laying a couple of bills back down, then taking the rest.

Athos tightens his arms around him, the fingers of one hand idly rubbing the collarbone piercing, running back and forth over the bits of black obsidian that mark him, and the water is so warm, and Holland isn’t shaking any longer. At least, not externally, not where Athos could see it. Inside, his heart is still beating like a drum against his breastbone and he can barely keep his breathing calm, he’s afraid that if Athos really looks at him he won’t be fooled and he’ll want to do something else.

At the same time, though, his arms and the hot water and just sitting here feels better than anything has felt in a very long time. 

“I love you,” Athos says, and his voice is harder this time, and Holland knows the expectation is there, finally, that he is being told he is loved but he is also being told what to say.

“I love you, too,” Holland says, and he doesn’t mean it but also he does, and he’s worried that even if the chance to get away comes, he won’t be able to take it.

_ The problem,  _ Holland thinks with the parts of his brain that still remember who he used to be,  _ is that I’m trying very hard to be good.  _

"There," Athos says tenderly. "Don't you feel better?"

"No.”

_ Yes. _


	33. I'm Not Going Anywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other SKGY piece I've written since the end of the monthly challenge - this takes place after the events of the narrative, when Holland agrees to have surgery done to help him recover his knee. This is mostly just fluff. Angsty fluff.

“I don’t understand why we’re here,” Kell’s brother says, sitting next to him in the hospital waiting room. No one would ever name them brothers on sight, of course; Rhy is dark-skinned and dark-haired and smiles all the time (even now, in a room full of worried people, he smiles), while Kell’s pale, redheaded, and never  _ not  _ fighting the urge to frown. But they met at five and three, respectively, and they’ve been brothers ever since. “You’ve been here  _ all damn day,  _ Kell. You’ve been here since he was still doing the prep stuff. You came here with him at  _ six a.m. _ ”

“Well, someone had to. I’m his medical emergency person, they need me to be close by in case something happens.” What _ if  _ something happens? Kell has worried over it all day.

Holland only agreed to this surgery because Kell insisted on it, that he shouldn’t have to carry around the wounds  _ they  _ gave him for the rest of his life when Maresh Logging Company money could buy him a better knee, a half-metal hand, and a way to take back control of his own body.

If something goes wrong, he’ll never forgive himself for pushing Holland to do this, but without making these decisions, Holland’s always going to be wrapped up in what they did to him, limited by it, limping every time he uses the stairs or runs with Theon, asking Kell to help him with things that take two hands.

He  _ needs  _ to do this, Kell tells himself, but still… he worries.

“That brings up whole  _ new  _ questions,” Rhy says insistently, leaning down to scratch Theon behind the ears. The service dog flicks on ear back towards Rhy, but he doesn’t relax. Theon hasn’t relaxed for a second all day. He doesn’t have his vest on, not right now, and officially he's not working - but he seems to sense Kell’s worry and reflects it right back. “Why are you his medical  _ anything?” _

“He doesn’t have anyone else. Someone has to help him get home. It seemed like common sense to give me the, the uh, the thing where if something happens I get to make decisions when he can’t. I don’t remember what it’s called.”

“Power of attorney?”

“That doesn’t sound right. But yeah, it made sense for me to be the one to help, didn’t it? I’m right here all the time, anyway.”

“Sure, but you could run errands, or head back home, or… you don’t have to stay here all  _ day,  _ sitting around with his  _ dog _ .”

“Theon and I should be here when he’s done. They said surgery could take eight to ten hours,” Kell says restlessly, left foot tapping rhythmically on the tile floor, one hand idly scratching at a bit of loose skin on his thumb while the other holds on to Theon’s leash.

Theon lays his head down on his paws, staring at the door, and sighs forlornly.

_ I feel you, buddy,  _ Kell thinks. He and Theon understand each other, these days. The dog’s let his guard down, spends less time carefully watching every move Kell makes in Holland’s direction. But then, that really just means that Holland is less nervous than he used to be.

“I know they said that, but… Look, I get that you stay with him a bunch. I do. But you’re just friends, right?”

Kell doesn't say anything, mostly because he has no idea what the answer is - he’s not even sure you could call it friendship, not exactly, not by anyone else’s definition.

Rhy’s eyebrows nearly meet his hairline. “... are you  _ dating  _ him?”

“No.” Kell pauses. “Yes.” He pauses again. “I don’t know.”

There’s silence, and he knows Rhy is waiting for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks away from the curiosity on his brother’s face and listens to a family in the corner arguing over what kind of pizza to order for dinner. His own stomach is nervously flipping, too much for him to even think about going downstairs to the hospital cafeteria. Besides, if he goes down there they might finish up with Holland while he’s gone and he would miss the call.

He can’t miss the call.

He has to be there when Holland wakes up. This was his idea, and Holland was so scared of what could happen while he was under. He  _ has to be there when he wakes up. _

“You’re not, like, the actual embodiment of the ‘they were just roommates and really close friends’ thing, are you?” 

“I don’t know if Holland really _ has _ close friends,” Kell says honestly enough. If anyone counts, it’s him, but… it’s not like he knows what Holland would even consider ‘close’. He sleeps on his couch, mostly, cooks for him when he's not up for cooking for himself. He's there when Holland can't sleep, to sit up watching the movies he can handle and skipping past the ones that set him off, like  _ Shawshank Redemption.  _ He's there to double-check pill counts and take Holland to Petco to buy Theon's supplies.

He's  _ there _ , and that's probably as close as you can even get to Holland Vosijk any longer if you’re not the dearly departed Athos or Astrid Dane. As far as he can tell, Holland is more devoted to their ghosts than he is to the very much living person right here with him.

_ Don’t be bitter,  _ Kell reminds himself.  _ That was never something he wanted. You’re not here to get something in return. _

Rhy’s concerned of course; so are Maxim and Emira. No one understands why Kell made the decision he did. By the time he and Holland had made their slow, torturous way through the redwoods and up that last horrible hill to the road, he had already made his choice.

He was going to take care of Holland Vosijk, no matter what, because what Holland did - and said - in those woods is the only reason Kell is still alive. He still jolts awake some nights feeling the gun barrel pressed against the side of his head, hearing Holland pleading with Athos not to shoot.

His family doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t give a fuck. He doesn’t  _ need _ them to understand. He doesn’t need  _ anyone _ to understand it. 

He just needs to be here when Holland wakes up.

"So… roommates?" Rhy has never been one to give up, that’s for sure. 

Kell frowns and looks away from him. “I don’t really live there. I still have my own place.” 

His own place that he barely stays at, pretty much just a storage unit for his stuff, and anyway he’s not even going to be there for weeks. He’s got a huge suitcase and a duffel bag full of everything he needs to live full-time with Holland sitting next to the couch, so he can live with him full-time during his recovery from the first knee surgery.

"Kell, don't be difficult. It's not like I'm asking hard questions."

"I'm  _ not  _ being difficult, Rhy, I swear. I just… don't have easy answers."

The surgical team said, during the consultation Holland brought Kell to, that it could be three or even four surgeries total, spread out over time. They’re reconstructing, basically replacing, the knee that Holland broke during his time in captivity. 

That’s what they call it, the reporters who sometimes find his name and ask if he will talk.  _ Would you be willing to contribute to a story on the Road Trip Twins and speak to Holland Vosijk’s time in captivity? _

As though Holland were a leopard at the zoo who stumbled off a rock, and not the survivor of an amount of sustained violence and abuse Kell can't even begin to fathom.

Of course he turns them all down. Holland’s story isn’t his to tell, and he wouldn’t even if it was.

Rhy is silent for a while, picking at an imaginary spot on his perfectly tailored pants. He looks out of place here, with the way he looks effortlessly cool everywhere he goes. In a room full of harried, worried friends and family, Rhy looks like he stepped out of a magazine. 

Kell never looks like that. Then again, he never really tries, either.

"Fine," Rhy finally says, sounding like a man with the world on his shoulders. "I'll ask you the first question I ask  _ myself  _ when I'm not sure if I'm dating someone."

"Rhy, please no.” Kell lets his head drop into his hands. He knows damn well where this is going.

"Have you _ slept with him?" _

Kell's face goes red, even though Rhy pitches his voice low and no one is close enough to hear them over the hum of the A/C and the buzz from the vending machines. He feels a surge of anger he can’t really define. It’s not the first time Rhy has asked him if he’s slept with someone yet, and normally it doesn’t bother him at all. 

But with Holland, it feels like digging his hands into a wound that’s still open, that’s still raw, and telling everyone to come look at the injured man trying to remember what living is like.

"Fuck off, Rhy."

"What? It's a legitimate way to find the answer! You don't have to tell me, just… ask  _ yourself _ , at least."

"It's none of your goddamn business."

"Based on how red your face is, I bet you have.” Rhy tilts his head, squinting to see Kell’s face through his fingers. “Hm… With my patented little-brother truth-telling vision, I’m going to say… three times.”

“Fuck  _ off,  _ Rhy!”  _ Jesus Christ, how can he tell just from what color my face is? _

“Which at least… 45% suggests you  _ are  _ indeed dating. Well, with you three times probably means more like 78.5%. Besides, I tell  _ you _ every time I sleep with someone for the first time!"

"Yes, and I have  _ repeatedly  _ asked you not to!"

Their whispers are getting louder, and an old man sitting nearby looks sidelong at them. Kell frowns. Rhy smiles, beatific as a saint. 

Kell looks back up at the monitor near the doorway, the one that is supposed to be keeping all of them updated. It has said Holland is ‘preparing for recovery’ for a long time, now, and Kell isn’t sure what that means but it makes him feel uneasy. There’s a brochure about the monitor somewhere that breaks down all the little update messages, but he doesn’t have the energy to get up and look for it.

There’s a long silence, and then Rhy finally clears his throat. “You’re right, it’s not really my business. You just… you’re not around much, lately. Mom and Dad and I are worried that this is…” He trails off, gnawing on his lower lip with a nervousness Kell hasn’t seen on him in years.

“That this is what?”

“We’re just worried that you’re using taking care of him to not look after yourself, like you did with me after… you know.”

_ Taking care of him _ is _ looking after myself. _

_ So was taking care of you. _

Twice in his life Kell has held a gun up to a man’s head and pulled the trigger. He was fourteen the first time, Rhy was only twelve. The surviving hostage-taker claimed they hadn’t meant to knock Rhy out, he’d hit his head on accident, but Kell had heard the sound of Rhy’s head cracking against the kitchen table from his hiding place in the coat closet under the stairs and gone looking for Maxim’s gun.

Maxim took Rhy and Kell out to the range all the time, of  _ course _ he knew how to handle firearms - and he knew where they were hidden, the places Maxim didn’t think they knew about. He’d looked at the people who had broken into their house, who had  _ hurt his brother _ , and he’d just… gone away for a while, in his head. When he came back, only one of them was still alive, and there was so much blood.

Rhy’s eyes had opened, at some point, and he looked around at the mess Kell had made and asked him, tears in his eyes,  _ whose blood is this? _

_ Not yours,  _ Kell had said, in a voice that sounded like a little kid’s and not his own. Then he’d thrown up all over the floor. He’d had nightmares for years, afterward. 

Then there was the second time, standing in Holland’s bedroom looking right into Athos Dane’s mad blue eyes that had been angry at him for taking Holland away, yes, but so full  _ of goddamn fucking love _ ... He had been right there, he hadn’t gone away in his head at all. He remembered every single bit of blood and bone.

He hadn’t felt a fucking thing when he pulled the trigger.

Only the shakes and the nausea, afterwards. Only knowing he had to make sure Holland never looked at what was left of Athos Dane’s head, or he would never, ever forgive Kell for saving him.

Kell had a lot of nightmares about Athos and Astrid Dane, but they were all about that night in the van, lying in the underbrush in the cold shivering and holding onto Holland, waiting to die, about listening to Holland's breathless voice begging on command while Athos told him what to say and what to do. 

He's never had a single solitary bad dream about the night he killed the motherfucker who would have taken Holland back to hell.

“I take care of us both,” Kell says finally. “And that’s all it has to be, for me, Rhy. Friends or dating or whatever… I just care about helping him get better. We’re who we are, and that’s it.”

“Fair enough. I’m going to go downstairs and get some more coffee.” Rhy hesitates, and there’s an apology he never voices but Kell hears it, anyway. They know each other too well for him not to. “Do you want me to get you anything?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Just go on home, okay? It could be another hour, or even longer. You don’t need to stick around just for me. Call Mom and Dad on the way, if you don’t mind, tell them I’ll send them a text in the morning.”

Rhy pushes himself to his feet, and Theon shifts around, glances back at Kell, then settles back onto his paws when he realizes Kell isn’t going to stand, too. “You’re going home tonight, right? After he wakes up?”

_ No.  _

“Yeah, absolutely,” Kell lies easily, the way he lies to everyone in his family. The way he lied to Vanessa, smooth as silk, when she wanted him to be honest. The way he has always lied to everyone but Holland. “I’m just going to make sure he’s settled and then head back.”

_ I’m going to sleep on the little couch thing they have in his room - I paid extra for him not to have a roommate, might as well make all this fucking money be good for something. I’m going to sleep right there next to him and I’m going to be awake if he needs me and I don’t care what you think, I don’t owe anyone an explanation. _

“Sounds good.” Rhy pauses, puts a hand on his shoulder, and then pulls back and away. “You’re a good person, Kell.”

“I’m a person, anyway,” Kell replies with a half-smile. Once Rhy is gone the smile drops right back off his face and he looks back up at the monitor.  _ H. Vosijk: Transitioning to Recovery _ , it says, and he lets out a breath. 

It’s nearly another full hour later when a nurse in scrubs hurries into the room, tendrils of hair loose from her businesslike ponytail, spotting him immediately. “You’re Mr. Maresh. Came in with Mr. Vosijk? That’s his service dog?”

“Yes,” Kell says, standing up. Theon stands, too, instantly on guard. “Is everything okay? Did he do okay?”

“He did just fine during surgery. Uh, can you come with me, please?” The nurse gestures towards the hallway and he follows her, seeing people glancing at him as he walks. “There’s been… an incident.”

_ I hate the word ‘incident’ so fucking much, lady, you have no idea. The cops call it an ‘incident’. The detectives call it an ‘incident’.  _

Once they’re safely out of earshot from the others in the waiting room, the nurse grabs him by the arm, stopping right where they stand. “Mr. Vosijk did fine during surgery,” She repeats, and pauses. 

Kell frowns. “But?”

“... he is not doing well in recovery.”

“He’s already awake? I asked that they write it into his notes that I had to be there when he woke up!” He has no idea where the recovery room even is, or he’d just barrel past her and go there himself right this second. 

_ Shit, he must be so scared. He never knows where he is when he wakes up, damn it, I told them to put that in his chart. _

“We had another patient who had some trouble, our attention was divided. He woke up before we had a chance to come get you. In any case, Mr. Vosijk seems to be having some trouble. He…”

“What?”

“He seems to think he’s somewhere else.”

Kell sighs, putting a hand up to his face, trying to think. Theon whines, in a soft voice, pulling on the end of the leash, as though he would know right where to go to find his missing human. “He always thinks he’s somewhere else. That’s why it’s in his-”

“I understand, sir, but if you can’t calm him down we’re going to move him somewhere where he can be restrained for his own safety.”

Kell’s heart goes cold and he looks up at her from underneath the bit of red hair that is always falling into his eyes. Whatever’s on his face, the nurse takes a step back from him. “You can’t do that. He’ll lose his shit if you try to restrain him. He has PTSD-”

“It would be for his own safety-”

“I heard you the first time. If you restrain him in any way he will lose his mind.  _ That is also in his notes.” _

The nurse hurries down the halls and he follows her in a furious silence, his hands shaking, Theon trotting right at his side. He had  _ specifically _ told them, at every consultation, during the scheduling meetings, at every single appointment - that Holland can’t wake up alone, that he wouldn’t know where he was and it could set him off again.

_ There are notes _ , he thinks, over and over, in an angry circle of pointless arguing with his own mind. They should have known, they should have come to get Kell before he ever woke up, they should have  _ known. _

The nurse leads him to a very large single room, with multiple beds separated by those pull-around curtains. He doesn’t have to guess which bed is Holland’s, though, because he can  _ hear  _ him long before they ever get there.

“No!” Holland’s voice is ragged and desperate and slurred. “I h-h-have to get it b-back  _ now, _ if I don’t g-g-g… g-get it back on he’s going to  _ know! _ Give it  _ back!” _

“Mr. Vosijk,” Kell can see the back of another nurse, speaking in a we’re-all-friends-here voice. “You need to calm down.” The nurse reaches towards Holland, and Kell  _ hears  _ Holland jerk backwards in the bed, the rattling of something that gets knocked over and onto the floor.

Theon ‘whuffs’, low and angry, and Kell’s grip on the leash is the only thing that keeps him from leaping to his person’s aid. 

“Sh-shit,” Holland groans. “I f-failed the test again, I f-fucking  _ failed,  _ I took it off, he’s going to be so m-m-m-...  _ mad _ …”

Kell pushes past the nurse without even looking at him. He’s got Theon’s leash in one hand, the service dog is pulling hard to get to Holland and Kell lets himself be pulled the rest of the way. His other hand is already digging into his pocket, because he knows exactly what Holland is looking for.

Kell has spent the entire day very much aware that he is carrying around in his pocket the wedding ring Holland was given by a psychopath and never, ever takes off, even this long after the bastard is dead. 

“Holl. It’s me.”

“Kell!” Holland turns to look at him, and Kell doesn’t flinch, but he nearly stops in his tracks. Holland’s trying to pull out the IV in his left arm -  _ thank God _ , Kell thinks,  _ they were smart enough to put it in his left arm _ . His right hand can’t close well enough to get a grip or get it out. He’s staring with wide green eyes that don’t see anyone here at all and his black hair is a mess. “Kell, they l-lost it, he’s g-g-g… g-going to be s-so angry, he gave that to me, he gave it to m-me to  _ keep!  _ Last time I f-f-failed, Astrid  _ died.  _ I  _ lost her,  _ Kell, _ I can’t fail the test again!” _

“I’ve got it, Holl,” Kell says in a soft, soothing voice, digging it out of his pocket and holding it up. The platinum band gleams, a little, in the hospital’s lights. There’s an engraving on the inside, something Holland never mentioned and Kell never knew about until Holland had to take the ring off for surgery prep this morning. _Love Isn't Something You Find. Love Finds You. _

Honestly, looking at that this morning, Kell had thought that it would be pretty nice to get to kill Athos Dane all over again, but slower this time.

“See, Holl?” He holds the hateful fucking piece of tin up in front of Holland’s eyes, making sure he sees it. “I’ve got it right here, okay?”

“He g-gave it to me,” Holland says, but his voice is quieter, and for the first time he actually looks Kell right in the eyes. “So he could find me again. He s-said not to take it off. It was a  _ test,  _ Kell.”

“Sssshhhh,” Kell says softly. “I know, Holl.” Theon puts his front paws up on the bed, nudging at Holland with his head, bumping hard against his leg. Holland stares down at the dog as though he’s never seen Theon before, blinking, before slowly pulling his right hand away from his left arm and resting it on the rabbit-soft fur between his pointed ears. 

“Hey, Theon, you good boy,” Holland says softly. His eyes are starting to clear, and he blinks a few times, looking around himself. “Oh, is surgery over?” Kell moves slowly around the bed to slide the ring back on his left ring finger, and swallows back the anger that has no place to go.

_ How long does he have to be dead before you’ll take this fucking thing off?  _

“Thank you,” The nurse says from just behind him, and Kell grinds his teeth together. It’s not her fault, he reminds himself. She didn’t know, they just didn’t look at the notes and they didn’t know.

“He’s got PTSD, he can’t be alone when he wakes up like this,” Kell says over his shoulder. “It was  _ all in his chart _ , you should have come to get me before he woke up. He struggles with waking up on a  _ good _ day.”

_ He thinks I don’t hear him talking to them. _

“We were dealing with another issue-”

“I understand that, but it was in his notes, I made sure  _ everyone _ understood how important it was-”

“Mr. Maresh, he is not the only patient in recovery today,” The nurse replies, her voice professional but stiff.  _ Not her fault,  _ Kell tries to remember.  _ She was just doing her job and Holland slipped through the cracks. _ “Now that he’s calmed down we can start preparing to move him to his room.”

“Great, thank you. Please, let’s just get him there as soon as you can, okay?” 

When she walks away, he turns back to Holland, who is opening and closing his left hand, looking down at the ring. They’d let him keep all his remaining piercings in, since the surgery was on his knee, and Kell can see the black obsidian at his collarbone on the left side glinting faintly in the light. Theon is still standing with his front paws up on the bed, laying his head on Holland’s right thigh, looking up at him with soulful, adoring eyes.

“My knee hurts,” Holland says, and his voice is odd and a little slurred still. 

“You’re still coming out of it.” There are two cans of ginger ale sitting on a small table next to the hospital bed, and Kell pops one open and takes a sip. “They said you did fine. The doctors will probably come say more once you’re in your room, though. I know they want you to stick around overnight.”

Holland nods, slowly, and then he looks back up at Kell, and for a second Kell wonders if you could tell which of them was the younger one, because Holland looks so fucking  _ young  _ when he is afraid. “Are you going b-back to the house t-t-tuh...t-”

“No,” Kell says quickly, cutting him off, putting a little bendy straw in the ginger ale. “I’m staying with you, Holl, all night. Lila Bard’s coming to pick up Theon around seven and then it’ll be you and me overnight. I am going to be right beside you every single second, okay?”

Holland nods again and relaxes a little, looking around himself for the first time. Kell holds out the ginger ale and he leans forward, taking a little sip through the straw, closing his eyes at the fizz. “Astrid always loved ginger ale,” He says softly, but he doesn’t stammer and his voice is strong. After a second, he holds out his right arm and Kell smiles, if only barely, and moves to put an arm around his shoulders and lean down, resting his chin on top of that mussed-up black hair. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” Kell says, softly. “I wanted to be here for you when you woke up.”

He doesn’t smile all that often, but when he smiles these days, it’s for Holland Vosijk. Taking care of Holland  _ is  _ taking care of himself, in the end, because Holland is rapidly becoming a part of him he can’t possibly walk away from.

There’s a pause, and then Holland turns his head and tilts it up, just a little. Kell takes the hint, for once, and the kiss is mostly platonic, but also it’s more than that. Whatever it is they are to each other, he feels Holland relax into his touch, and hears Theon’s deep, resigned sigh.

“You always come back,” Holland says, as if it’s a revelation and not just a simple fact. “For me.”

“I’m not going  _ anywhere, _ ” Kell replies, and tries not to look at that hateful fucking ring on Holland’s finger or think about the bloodied body he’d left on Holland’s floor.

Kell has seen Holland Vosijk terrified, pleading for his life, holding on to Kell with pure desperation without ever taking his eyes off of Athos Dane’s face. He’s seen him crying into a murderer’s dead body, weeping at her loss. He’s seen Holland Vosijk limp with grim determination through pitch-black woods in the middle of the night for hours, dragging Kell like an anchor beside him, to try and find him help before he bled out. 

He’s seen him waking from nightmares covered in sweat, coming out of the shower with red-rimmed eyes he refuses to talk about. He’s seen him drinking coffee at the kitchen table and smiling a little when Kell gives it to him in a silly mug, waking him with shaking hands in the middle of the night to hum a few bars of a song he’d dreamed of Athos singing to him.

He’s seen Holland laugh so hard his sides hurt, watched him lay on the couch with Theon laying right on top of him, the two of them sighing in unison until Kell can barely stand the sound. He’s felt Holland relax against his touch, and seen him making careful, detailed notes in the margins of all the books Dr. Rosa gives him to read.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kell repeats, liking the way the words sound when he says them out loud and not just inside his head. Holland leans in against him. “One day, when I tell you that, you’re going to believe me.” **   
**


	34. Feels Like Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just another modern! Holland (Holland Vosijk, Grad Student) flashback post-homelessness! Just some nice family fluff.

“Can I… ask you something?”

Marjori looks up from scraping the hide she has staked out in front of her on the lawn, squinting up at him. There’s a huge bonfire going in the front corner of the cabin’s yard, laid with green wood to make it smoke, with the already-prepared hides staked out in just the right direction for the gentle, barely-there breeze to blow the smoke their way. 

Some days, he comes out here and helps her, and he and his new stepmother work in comfortable silence for hours. Holland doesn't enjoy talking, and if Marjori liked to talk he would probably hate her.

She doesn't, though. Marjori is a woman who lives in total silence whenever possible, and increasingly she includes him in it.

He has new glasses, and his vision isn’t blurry for the first time since they lost the house. He has clean clothes that fit and jeans with no holes in the knees ( _ “No stepson of mine will look like we cannot buy him new jeans when he grows,” Marjori had snapped when Holland said he didn’t mind just keeping the old ones _ ). He has a coat, and even though it’s not really cold enough for him to feel like he needs it he wears it anyway just because he has one.

Marjori gave him money, when they went shopping, and told him to pick out anything he wanted. She probably thought about CDs or something, but Holland came back with a set of black leather fingerless gloves and he likes the way they look and feel.

Marjori had approved of his choice, told him it was always important to have a good grip even in the cold.

He is more bundled up than he needs to be, and Marjori, at first glance, is far  _ less  _ bundled up than she should be. She's spent most of her day near the fire, so she's wearing just a T-shirt and jeans and her heavy brown boots, but even in those thoroughly modern clothes she looks like she’s stepped out of some kind of medieval Swedish fairy-tale book about witches. 

_ "Read us the story of Kitta Grau and the Devil," the twins insisted one night, as though he was the adult in the room and not barely two years older than them.  _

_ "We'll help you with the voices," Astrid said brightly. "I'll be Kitta Grau." _

_ "I'll be the farmer," Athos piped up, and his eyes shine with hero worship every time he looks at Holland. It's… uncomfortable. "You be the Devil." _

_ "The Devil and Kitta Grau are lovers," Astrid said a little slyly, and Athos punched her in the arm. "Ow, you dick! Well, the Devil probably fucks the farmer, too. It's implied." _

_ "Your  _ mother  _ reads you this story?" Holland asked, baffled and a little disgusted. _

_ "Um… we might have added to it a little," Athos admitted. _

Marjori is wearing the necklace she always has on, four small stones that hang off a chain. Each stone has a rune carved into it on one side, and a letter on the other.

When she put the H for Holland on, she asked him to touch it first, and think into it anything he wished, to get something of himself into the stone that she claims will protect him. 

Holland had thought,  _ I hope I find someone one day I can like as much as Dad likes her, and also I hope I never get on the twins' bad side. _

“Of course you may ask,” She says warmly, although her arm’s strong back-and-forth motion never stops, scraping the last bits of grain and membrane off the hide. Soon enough it’ll be time to wring it out and use the awful braining mix, and he can smell it already in its bucket off to the side. 

He doesn’t mind helping her, normally - Marjori’s got the strongest water pressure in a shower he’s ever felt, and he always feels clean even after the grossest hide-tanning day - but later he’s going out with some of his new friends from school (who think the fact that he was homeless makes him the actual coolest person on earth, and refuse to believe him when he says it was mostly monotonous and lonely and shitty and he did some stuff just to pass the time he's not proud of) and he doesn’t want to smell. “You may ask me anything, within reason. We are an honest people, we Danes.”

_ To a fault,  _ he thinks. He can hear the twins, somewhere nearby, shouting good-naturedly at each other from shockingly high up in a tree, throwing crabapples at the rangy half-stray cats Marjori feeds. 

They’re half-feral, Marjori’s children, and strike him as even more inhuman than their mother. And they never,  _ ever  _ stop being horrifyingly  _ honest  _ with him.

_ "Astrid wanted to kiss you before your dad married our mom," Athos told him one day out of the blue, right in the middle of studying. Holland had looked up with wide eyes, and Athos shrugged, as though it were the most casual thing in the world. "Mom married your dad too fast, she didn’t get a chance. She’s still pissed about it." _

_ "What if I didn’t want to kiss her?" _

_ Athos laughed, smacking his hand on the table as though Holland had told a joke. "Do you think that really matters to Astrid?" _

They assure him they took a vote, and this is his family, now.  _ You’re a Dane, whatever you call yourself,  _ Astrid insisted, shaking his hand like they were 19th-century oil barons making some kind of business deal.  _ We’re on your side, we’ve got your back. Danes share everything; you’ll never be alone again. _

Holland had thought that sounded like a threat, although Astrid clearly found it terribly comforting. 

She meant what she said, though - he gets mostly left alone at school, thanks to the absolute terror with which everyone else seems to see his newly-15-year-old stepsiblings.

He clears his throat, licks nervously at his lips, chewing on a bit of chapped skin on the bottom one. “I just… wondered… why  _ Dad?” _

Marjori’s hand finally pauses and she sits back on her heels. Her long dark hair is pulled into a low ponytail and when she looks up at him, he’s caught again by the absolute focus in her too-bright blue eyes, slightly upswept at the corners, the way her cheekbones are high and sweep along the same angle. He’d thought the blue color came from colored contacts, when he first met her - but no, those are just her _ eyes _ . Astrid and Athos have eyes like that, just a little more faded… eyes that catch and hold you in place, like hypnosis. Holland has seen Astrid catch boys and hold them, with those eyes, has seen Athos smile at a girl and turn her knees liquid. None of their tricks work on him. “What do you mean, Holland?”

She never calls him Holl, like his dad and the twins do. Always his full name, rolled in her accent, sounding prettier than it does when anyone else says it. The only thing he has from his mother is his first name - his first name and Alox, and Alox he’s lost, too.

“Dad doesn’t seem like he’d be your type. He’s not… outdoorsy, or anything, like you are.”  _ My father watches Andy Griffith and Lone Ranger reruns, for God's sake. _

“Do you have an issue with your father and I?” She asks, tilting her head. If it were anyone else, they’d be upset, or at least irritated. But Marjori’s voice is calm, full of curiosity. She is always waiting for him to come to her with questions, with his thoughts. She never rushes him or pushes for more than he is able to give.

It’s why he can work alongside her in silence for a whole day, while he and his dad still fight about everything. 

The fights have changed, at least. They're softer, less vicious, and more often end with the two of them agreeing without words to watch a movie together or cook dinner, but they’re still fights. They still remind him of the halfway houses and hostels, when he and Nathan would end up nearly screaming night after night.

He'd run away after one of those fights, ended up crashing with some guy, and  _ that  _ had been a bad situation, too… he'd only meant to go for a couple of days to cool off, and somehow he'd lost two years.

But he's home now, he guesses, and he's just grateful to have a door to slam when he’s angry.

“No, that’s not what I mean. I just wondered… you’re so different. What made you see him and think… you know…  _ I want that one? _ ”

Marjori laughs, and the sound is musical. Astrid’s laugh is a lot like hers, and Holland wonders if Astrid practices to make it sound that way on purpose. “You want to know what attracted me to your father?”

“Um… yes.” He hadn’t thought of it that way, and he reddens when she names it for what it is, but it’s true. They don't make any  _ sense _ .

Nathan is mild-mannered and quiet, bakes and cooks constantly, watches ancient sitcom reruns and argues with the contestants on the game shows he likes. He does the  _ crossword. _

Marjori is… a terrifying witch-goddess from somewhere very foreign to him, and even now he’s not entirely sure what happened to make his life turn out this way.

“I met your father in the city plaza,” Marjori says, going back to scraping, the soft  _ sssshhh, sshhhhh _ of the scraper the backdrop to her words. “I had gone into town to buy some hip waders, as I had a mind to catch a few spiders. Ah, that is a fun story, too, would you like to-”

“No. Uh, um. No thanks. Just… about Dad, please.”

“Fair. I forget that not everyone knows how important a good spider is to a working household. He was sitting at a table next to the hotel - you know where the hotel is, right? Right, of course you do, we went to that restaurant next door. He was sitting there, reading a book, and I saw him and thought…  _ so gentle, that one, gentle and sad. _ Your father was always sad, until you came back to him." Her hand paused again, only for a moment, but Holland watched the faint smile spread across her odd fey face and felt uncomfortable, like he’d asked the wrong question or perhaps the perfect one, both at the same time.

“There is a way I have, of making men look at me,” She continued. “When I want them to, anyway. Your father looked up at me, when I wanted him to look, and he… was unafraid.” She licked her lips, in thought. “Most people are afraid of me, Holland. My twins have this power, too, to make the world look and know fear."

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” _ I've never seen Astrid or Athos pay for a damn thing, and somehow they always have beer. _

“Your father was not. He looked up at me, and he smiled, and he just said hello. I thought, in that moment,  _ I have found a match, and we must light a fire. _ I introduced myself, and he told me his name was Nathan and he would like to buy me coffee and see more of me."

Holland wrinkled his nose. “Ew.”

“That is not how he meant it. Bah, teenagers. You and the twins, the three of you always reading things the worst way.”

“I am  _ not  _ as bad as the twins.”

She winked at him, a mischievous smile on her face. “Aren’t you? In any case, what attracted me to your father at first sight was a simple lack of fear and the fact that he was curious about me. What made me decide to stay with him that night-”

“Oh,  _ ew. _ ”

“Hush. What made me decide to stay with him that night was that he spoke about you, and your brother, and he was not afraid of speaking about you. I like a man who has courage in many areas of his life, I have met so few of them."

"He talked about me?"

"Always. He was always talking about you."

Holland flushes red, but if Marjori notices, she keeps it to herself. "What kept me with him, and what led me to bring him here to my home and build a life beside him - what led me to hunt you down across five states and bring you back - is that he is… steadfast. That is a rare quality, in modern man. Your father is noble, and steadfast, and devoted to you above all else."

She is always saying things like that, things that make it sound like Marjori is hundreds of years old and struggling to adjust.

She looks up at him. At the same moment, he hears a yowl as Athos throws one of the crabapples just a little too close to the cat that hates him the most.

"Um. Thanks."

"Does that answer your question, Holland?"

"Yes." He doesn't say goodbye; Marjori thinks any goodbye that doesn't involve someone actually leaving the property is a pointless waste of air. Instead, he only walks away, digging his hands into his pockets, and listens to the sound of Marjori beginning to scrape the hide again.

_ He was always talking about you. _

Holland makes his way inside, knowing the twins will follow him soon enough. He finds Nathan sitting on the couch, some old show on TV, and instead of taking the armchair like he usually does, he flops down beside him.

"Hey, kiddo," Nathan says, a little hesitantly. Holland knows he's hard to read, that sometimes he's angry and he doesn't know why. He doesn't know how to stop the anger, when it starts, but Marjori sends him out to chop firewood when he needs to calm down and it helps.

"Hey, Dad," Holland says. After a long silence, he slowly leans to the side, until his head is resting on Nathan's shoulder. "Thanks for not giving up on me when I was gone."

"Never, Holl." 

After that, they sit in quiet, comfortable silence waiting for the twins to break it up with chaos - but for now, it's just Holland and his dad, the way it used to be.

"Marjori says you never stopped looking for me."

His dad takes a deep breath, and lets his own head fall to the side, so father and son are leaning on each other. "No. I was never going to stop looking. Marj is just better at finding than I am, and you were better at hiding than I ever thought you could be."

"I'm not hiding anymore."

"I know, kiddo."

They watch TV, father and son, and Holland thinks for the first time that this cabin really feels like home.


	35. Seeing Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The endless month continues. More SKGY bits, here.

When Kell comes back from the store with beer, Theon is out on his cushion in the living room next to the sofa, settled down with his favorite purple monster stuffie, chewing on it idly and watching Kell with his slightly narrowed brown eyes as he opens the door, ears straight up, giving Kell his total focus and attention.

“Hey, buddy,” Kell says out loud, in the same tone Holland uses, but Theon isn’t fooled and doesn’t so much as twitch a muscle. “Where is he?”

Theon glances back over one shoulder, then looks right back at him. Kell blinks and follows his gaze. The bathroom door is closed and he can hear the shower running.

Kell tenses up and waits, but all he hears is the water itself; no sound of Holland talking to  _ them  _ the way he sometimes does, no sound of things being knocked around, no sound of loud breathing... nothing. Just water. When he looks back at Theon, the dog is about as relaxed as he ever gets when Kell is in the room. “Is he okay in there, Theon? Did he at least remember to wrap the plastic over his bandages?" 

Theon ‘woofs’ gently, and goes back to chewing on his stuffie, his eyes still focused on Kell. There’s another long moment where man and dog simply stare at each other, the two steadfast guardians of a damaged man.

They might understand each other well enough, at this point, but Theon never lets his guard down when Kell is in the room unless Holland says it’s okay.

Except… there’s a thing about Theon that has been bugging Kell lately, too. He’d taken him down to the beach to walk a few weeks ago, before Holland's surgery, and something… weird had happened. It’s happened a couple more times since.

The walk had started out normal enough. Holland was having one of his harder days, so Kell had volunteered to take Theon out himself to give him some space. They’d gone down the streets, walked a few blocks, crossed the highway, and ended up at Theon’s favorite part of the beach, a rocky area where almost no one else really spent much time. 

Kell had been watching Theon scratch at something in the sand. He’d been thinking about it all over again, the way he sometimes went in circles thinking about the ghosts that haunted them both. He’d never say a word about it to anyone else, not even Rhy, but he thought about the redwoods all the time. 

They told him, in the hospital, that the ketamine Astrid had spiked his drink with would probably wipe out his short-term memory of the night, but it never did. 

He lost some stuff at the beginning; he remembers Astrid sitting down with him, being startled by how pretty she was and that she seemed so interested in  _ him.  _ Holland had called it  _ hunting,  _ when they talked about it - that Astrid always knew what man in the room had no one waiting for him at home, singled them out, knew how to get them to look at her.

_ Athos did it, too,  _ Holland had said, as though the words were forced out.  _ Athos mostly hunted women, Astrid mostly men. _

_ Except for you,  _ Kell had said without thinking.  _ Athos wanted you, right? _

Holland had paused, looking with a blank face over at the silly magnets Kell bought him to put all over his fridge.  _ They  _ both _ wanted me, or that’s what they said. From the second they saw me. _

Lila says she came over to talk to them, but he doesn’t remember that either, or Astrid Dane taking him out of the bar. He has no idea what happened in the van before they made it to the woods. But from the second they’d left the road and started bumping over the forest floor, Kell remembers it all. 

He’d been standing there holding onto Theon’s leash, thinking about the way the trees had risen up above them like strange giants looking down, in the cold and quiet darkness. The only sounds had been those the three of them made and the wind through the trees. As time stretched out around them, and he bled and bled endlessly into the forest floor, Kell had, for the first and only time in his life, genuinely believed in Hell.

The thoughts intrude, they break in. They don’t ask first, or pick only the times it’s easy for Kell. 

No, the memories choose their own moments to pop up, and with the ocean in his ears and the sound of Theon happily trying to dig up tiny animals hiding in the sand, they chose that exact second for Kell to recall the way a cold gun barrel feels pressed against the place your pulse beats in your temples, the heavy weight of a wail that is caught in your throat and won’t come out, the way the blood running from his shoulder stayed warm even as the rest of him went cold.

Maybe he’d tightened his grip on the leash, or pulled on it a little, or something. He’d been hearing, in the sound of the breeze and the push-pull of the water, the way Holland had stammered when he begged, his own fingers cold as ice around Kell’s, pleading  _ I love you, please let me save this one, you're all I have, I would never leave you, no one loves me but you, I'll never leave you, I'll try so hard, I'll never look anywhere but at you, _ and the way it felt as it sunk in that whether he lived or died was entirely based on whether or not a psychopath who had spent half the time he was on Holland talking to the dead fucking sister of his he'd nailed to a fucking  _ tree _ thought Holland was telling the truth.

Kell hadn’t realized he’d lost track of the world around him until he’d heard a deep ‘woof’ and felt a hard shift of something against his leg. He’d looked down to realize Theon had come back and was leaning against him, looking right up with his serious ‘working’ face, whining low in his throat, pawing just a little at his jeans.

At the same moment, he felt long, cold fingers close around his throat, felt her press against him from behind, and he tilted his head back to stare up at the sky, his breath catching in his throat. 

_ It's all just borrowed time, isn't it?  _

He had only heard her real voice, when she dropped the lie, once in his life and even though he can't remember when she discarded the façade or what she did, not exactly, some deep part of him remembers her voice the way a mouse knows the sound of snake. Wry humor devoid of affection, hard as a diamond, sharp as a blade. 

_ Every fucking second of your life is time you borrowed from my Holland. You didn't earn your heartbeat, little boy. You goddamn fucking coward. You made him earn it  _ for  _ you. _

Kell froze. She was dead, and he knew it, but also she was standing right behind him and he was too scared to turn around. _ You were his gift. You were going to make him like us, but he failed, because of you.  _ Her teeth grazed the shell of his ear - impossible, she was too short and also she was  _ fucking dead _ but he felt it anyway _ . I hope you are sufficiently grateful. You won't ever take another breath that isn't only because he had.more courage than you. _

Theon whined again, leaning all 80 lbs of weight against him, and Kell, surprised and caught off-guard and focused wholly on her hand around his neck, fell gracelessly backwards into the sand. He jerked around to look behind himself and… no one was there.

_ Dead. She's dead. _

Theon simply sat on him, resting his head on Kell's shoulder, and he found himself sitting very still in a way he'd seen Holland do a dozen times, listening to the sound of the dog breathing right next to his ear, slowly putting his arms around Theon's warmth and soft fur.

Gradually, he realized his heart was racing, only as it began to calm.  _ Fuck,  _ Kell had thought to himself. _ What is happening to me? _

He still doesn’t have an answer to that question, or at least not one he’s willing to think too long about. But he's had two more times where Theon has broken him out of the daydreams (Daymares? Flashbacks? What do you call them?) and he's facing the disturbing realization that he needs to talk to someone about it.

He can’t tell Holland - the other man has it hard enough, so much harder. But he needs to tell  _ someone _ , and he can’t stand the idea of admitting to it, so he adds this new problem to the list of things he is steadfastly ignoring.

It’s been more than a year, now. He knows it’s not entirely unusual that he'd only start having issues later on. He knows that delayed trauma is real, and that he’s been so full of taking care of Holland that he’s been able to lay all his own problems aside. 

Monsters shoved in closets don’t stay there forever, and Kell’s have been reaching out.

His family insists he's being too selfless and caring, that he doesn't owe Holland anything any longer, and Kell doesn't tell them that he's not being selfless, but just the opposite.  _ He _ doesn’t sleep through the night when he sleeps alone, either. He never really has, not since what happened with Rhy, but it's so much worse now.

He's not selflessly helping a man he met on the worst night of his life. He's earning back every single heartbeat.

Kell is content sleeping on the sofa, standing between someone he cares about and their fears, because twice in his life he hasn't been there because he walked away from a stupid petty  _ insecurity _ and twice he's watched blood and bone and brain spread on a floor because he got brave too late to stop something awful before it started.

If anything ever happens again, he'll be there. He can take a few ghosts and some dreams about the redwoods if it means that next time, he'll  _ be there. _

_ Every breath you ever take is because of him. _

Kell thumps the six pack onto the kitchen table, trying to shake the thoughts out of his head. He had one bad night, really, and there’s no way he’s going to let  _ one bad night  _ make it harder for him to take care of Holland, who had  _ several hundred bad nights in a row _ and needs someone who won't disappear more than Kell has ever needed anything.

_ Holland isn’t the only person in dire need of extensive fucking therapy, _ Kell thinks, but some things he has always kept to himself. Like that he’s killed people, and never regretted a single one. Like the fact that most of his personality is just a mask he puts on to fit in, and there’s a whole other person underneath - someone Holland knows, and Lila Bard knows, and Rhy knows… and that’s it.

He was  _ too much emotional work,  _ Vanessa had said when they fought the last time, not long before that night in the bar. What she’d meant was that there was too much inside of Kell that he never shared and never wanted anyone to go looking for.

Well, that was fine. 

It’s not like Holland doesn’t keep some secrets, too. Holland hides his secrets, and Kell lies about his, and really they’d be perfect for each other, if either one of them knew what 'perfect' might even mean.

Kell takes out one of the cans of beer and opens it, taking a long drink, wrinkling his nose a little at the strong dark chocolate taste of the stout. There’s more beer in the fridge, but it’s the stuff Holland drinks, all sour hop taste and citrus, and Kell… isn’t a fan.

Holland once said he wasn’t a fan of IPAs ‘before’, either, and that had been one of the things that hung between them, unspoken, because Holland deserved someone in his life who could just let a statement about  _ them  _ stand without picking it to shreds for psychology.

The sound of the shower cuts off, abruptly, and Kell and Theon both immediately sit up, listening. After a few long seconds of silence, Kell clears his throat and takes another drink. "Do you need help?" He calls out.

"No," comes the muffled voice through the door. “I got it, thanks.” The voice is solid and steady and  _ present  _ and Kell smiles, just a little.

Maybe  _ he  _ should start seeing Dr. Rosa and ask for the pills Holland takes, because one of them is getting better with time and the other is having - has just  _ started _ having - what Dr. Rosa continues to call  _ visual disturbances. _

_ What happens if I get better? What does that look like? Do I stop wanting to be here?  _

_ If that’s what happens, I’d rather stay the same. _

He picks up the six pack and lets himself flop bonelessly onto the corner seat of the couch, settling the beer on the side table beside him, turning on the TV and taking another drink. 

He doesn't turn around when Holland comes out of the bathroom, although Theon does. Kell watches the dog out of the corner of his eye as those big brown eyes look up and up and up into Holland’s face. There’s the soft thump of the crutch on the floor alongside his slow footsteps, moving from bathroom to bedroom. The click of the door closing, and the muffled sounds of Holland dressing himself - scrape of a dresser drawer opening, sounds of cloth, scrape of the drawer closing again. Kell and Theon listen to it all with perfect awareness.

When Theon turns back to his purple monster and starts idly chewing again, Kell relaxes, too.

He only  _ looks _ when Holland comes around the side of the couch, using one crutch to keep the weight off his still-healing knee, and swallows against the image of the tendrils of damp black hair that stick to the side of his neck and his forehead. He's got on a plain red shirt and black sleep pants and Kell lets himself think, briefly, about taking them off of him and how he'd look in the bed.

How he  _ did  _ look, the couple of times he’d asked. Kell said yes, when he asked, had done what  _ he _ wanted and told  _ him _ to take the lead, something Holland had hesitated to do.

He wonders if Holland has told Dr. Rosa about  _ that. _

"Did you remember to wrap your knee up first and not get the bandages wet?" 

"Yes I did. And close your mouth, I took my pain pill, too." Holland's eyes flicker to the TV and back, a little nervously, but what he sees there must be on his 'safe' list, because he doesn't walk away or ask Kell to turn it off. Instead, he leans over a little more, looking at Kell. "Can I sit with you?"

Kell blinks and looks over at him, and he's struck again by the shy smile on Holland's face. Was his smile shy before? Did he used to be loud, or take up space in a room, or tell dirty jokes? Who  _ was  _ Holland, before? Kell doesn’t know - and he has no idea if any aspect of that man is still around or going to come back. "It's  _ your _ couch, Holl, of course you can."

“No, not just on the couch. Um.  _ With  _ you.” 

“Oh. Yeah. Go for it.” Kell looks back at the TV, carefully casual, pretending to care about what’s on as he flips through the stations. Holland lets the crutch drop to the floor and uses the arm of the couch to support himself, finally lying down with his his legs up over the arm and his head resting on Kell’s leg. 

“Look, I even elevated my knee, Dr. Maresh. Are you proud of me?” Holland’s teasing him, Kell realizes, he’s making a  _ joke.  _ And it’s not sarcastic, or cynical, or bitter. It’s just… a joke.

“Of course I’m proud of you,” Kell replies, sincerely enough, and there’s an awkward silence where Holland just turns his head to look at the TV. The weight of Holland’s head is warm, and damp from his wet black hair. Kell hesitates, then gradually lifts one hand to rest it on his head, running his fingers slowly through Holland’s hair.

Holland doesn’t stop him, so he keeps doing it, slow comforting grazes of his fingernails along the top of the other man’s head. They sit there in silence for a while, until Holland says, “Give me a beer.”

“You  _ just took a Percocet,  _ Holl, I’m  _ not  _ giving you beer.”

Holland laughs, and he doesn’t laugh all that often. It’s always a surprisingly deep sound. “Kell, I can have  _ one beer.  _ Astrid used to mix up pills in the vodka she gave me all the time, shit way worse than Percocet. I was high basically all the time until they let me start driving. It won’t do anything to me, I promise. I don’t even think the  _ Percocet _ does all that much by itself, I’ve probably had it too much by now.”

“Absolutely none of the things you just said are in any way reassuring to me, Holland Vosijk. In fact, all of that was  _ horrifying. _ "

Holland's face clouds over, for just a second, and Kell feels a stab of regret. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't h-have…"

"Hey," Kell says hurriedly. "That's not what I meant. I was joking."

"You were?" He tilts his head back to meet Kell's eyes, shifting around, and the sense of his head briefly against Kell's hip is almost painful in the way it's  _ exactly  _ what Kell wants to feel. “Okay. I’m a grown-ass man, Kell Maresh. Give me a beer.”

Kell shrugs, gives up, and does what he's told. Holland doesn't sit up - he twists around so he's lying on his side, making a face when he takes a sip. "Oh, this is your dark shit."

"I  _ like  _ dark beer," Kell protests, running his fingers over the top of Holland's head again, combing it a little to the side."It's almost the same color as your hair."

Holland snorts. "No, it's not."

"No," Kell admits. "It's not. I just think about your hair too much."

Whatever Holland thinks about that, he doesn't say anything. He's silent for a while, eyes mostly closed, drinking the beer with slow sips. Kell keeps the TV on safe shows, although you never know with Holland - so much of what sets him off is  _ music,  _ not imagery.

It's taken time for Kell to work out that Astrid had songs she killed to, songs she played while getting rid of bodies or driving, songs she used to keep people from hearing what happened to Holland inside motel after motel - and that nearly all of those songs still terrify him.

Athos had all of those but also songs he  _ sang -  _ the things Holland sometimes wakes Kell up with when he dreams about them, humming them or trying to get Kell to help him remember the words. 

Both of them had their favorite music to hurt him to, and based on Holland's panic attacks Kell has figured out he's more likely to hear an Astrid song in a place like the mall, but an Athos song plays more often on TV.

Except for the time they went to Starbucks without Theon, and Katy Perry's Waking Up in Vegas had played for some godforsaken reason in the absolute last place Kell had ever expected to hear it, and Holland had started shaking and talking to himself ( _ "I shouldn't have left, should have stayed in the room, it was my fault, my fault for trying to call someone, I should have tried harder to be good" _ ) and it had taken Kell  _ hours  _ (and one of the ‘emergency’ pills Dr. Rosa had said to only take if nothing else worked) to calm him down.

_ What happened to him in Las Vegas?  _ Kell has never felt able to ask, but it's the place he talks about most in his sleep, and that stupid fucking song was the one that set him off the worst Kell has ever seen.

Those songs  _ all  _ set him off in different ways, though, and Kell can't always predict what kind of song will be a problem. He never realized how  _ much  _ music is on TV before this, how  _ many  _ movies and shows include torture and blood and the same kind of violence Holland had been subjected to.

Kell had never, in his life, realized how much fucking  _ rape  _ there is on TV. When he’d told Lila Bard about it, during a visit to her bar, she’d laughed and laughed and said it must be really fucking nice to have never noticed that before.

_ "You aren't his  _ husband,  _ Kell," Rhy had insisted one night he'd come over for dinner. "This isn't your responsibility. You shared a bad night, sure, but you've already given all the thanks you could possibly owe. You barely know him!" _

_ "It's been a year, Rhy. I know him better than anyone else does at this point," Kell said, dryly. "Anyone alive, anyway." _

_ At that, Rhy dropped his eyes, and Kell felt a momentary, empty sense of victory. _

_ Kell is the only surviving intended victim. He and Holland - and only Holland seems to believe they ever originally intended to kill Holland himself in the first place. _

_ Kell had seen the look in Athos Dane's eyes when he'd come back. The fucking killer had been looking at the love of his life. _

_ "Are you sure you're not spending too much time with Mr. Vosijk?" Emira had tilted her head, very real concern in her warm brown eyes. "We just want to know that this is what you really want, dear." _

_ "I'm sure," Kell had said in a voice he'd learned from Maxim, a voice that brooked no argument, allowed no appeal. "This is what I want." _

_ He doesn't know what they think of Holland, really. He hasn't asked and he doesn't actually care.  _

_ He hadn't been able to save Rhy from the people who had broken in when Maxim and Emira were at some charity thing and left their sons alone. He hadn't been able to save Holland until after his nightmares had hunted him down. _

_ Next time - whatever the threat might be, even if it was just a song or a scene on TV - he'd be there. _

Kell is lost in his own thoughts and well into beer number two when Holland, out of nowhere, says out loud, "Athos and I used to lay like this in the bed. He said it felt like he had a pet."

Kell's fingers freeze in Holland's hair. "Do you want to sit up?"

"No," Holland says in a voice that's more murmur than anything else. His eyes are closed, bad hand resting on Kell's leg, the back of his head a light pressure against Kell's hip. "It was nice. It's nicer now. Keep doing that thing with my hair."

"If… if Athos did it…"  _ If Athos did it, I don't want to,  _ Kell thinks but doesn't - can't - say. 

“It was different with him,” Holland says without opening his eyes. “Just… please keep going.”

Kell frowns, uneasy, but still he starts moving his fingers through his dark hair again, looking down at him, the voices of the cartoon family arguing on TV (and the sligh chewing noise of Theon with his stuffie) a faint backdrop to the moment.

"They did a lot of things," Holland says absently. "Not all of them were bad."

_ Everything they did to you was bad, because all of it was by design.  _

At the same time, Kell has listened to Holland  _ mourn them _ , and there's a part of him that just wants to understand  _ why. _

"What was a good thing they did?" Kell asks, and it's the dumbest fucking thing he's ever asked, because the answer of course is  _ nothing. _

Holland doesn't act like it's dumb, though, and after a long pause, he says softly, "We went to Canada. They skipped it on the first round, we never went there or to Alaska. They were really… happy with me, and said I could ask for something if I wanted. I asked if we could go see Canada, f-for… as a present."

_ What a good boy he is,  _ Kell imagines Astrid saying to Athos, and feels the anger in him again. He swallows it down, trying to keep his mind on the feel of his fingers in Holland’s soft hair, the hair that smells like him, now, because Holland uses the same shampoo he does.

"... Isn't there a border check? Don't they give them all the Wanted posters for fugitives? How the  _ fuck- _ "

"I don't know. Astrid spoke to them, we had fake passports. Maybe they were really good. They let us in after talking to her. I don't know what she said." 

Kell, thinking of the way she'd looked right at him when she sat down at his table, like he was the only other person in the whole world, shivers. He probably would have let her in, too.

Cold fingertips trail the back of his neck, and Kell tenses. He feels her draw the diamond and then the long legs, tracing the letter  _ A  _ once on each side,  _ D  _ at the bottom. He feels the hesitation, and then, larger, at the very bottom, an  _ H. _

_ If he had played along, he’d have been the first to have you,  _ she says, playfully almost, but her voice has an off note in it, something thick and rotted from the inside out. If he turns around, he thinks, he’ll see her, like Holland sees them sometimes on his bad days.  _ So I suppose he deserves to be written here, too.  _

If he sees her, will he see her whole? Will she look like she did the first moment she sat down to speak to him, smiling brightly, touching his shoulder and the side of his face a little more often than he was uncomfortable with? Or will she be gray in the face, blue in the lips, still losing blood from the place where Lila’s knife had nicked her lung and sealed her death? Will her eyes still be slitted open to stare down at him with that awful anger?

_ I don't  _ have _ the tattoo,  _ he thinks with sudden terror, even as he can  _ feel  _ her fingers along the exact place it would be if he did.  _ I don't  _ have  _ one. _ He's kissed the one on Holland, before, when he asked him to, and he’s stared at it so many times wondering when he’ll finally get it removed, but  _ he doesn’t have one. _

_ We marked you, too,  _ she whispers. He can hear her voice right in his ear, nearly feel her icy breath.  _ Even if nobody sees it.  _ Cold lips press the back of his neck.  _ Everywhere you go, you are marked by us. _

“ _ You’re dead _ .” He tries to say it, but all that comes out is a wordless breath of air. 

_ You shouldn’t be here… and you know it, don’t you, flower boy? _

"Canada was… was great," Holland continues, apparently not noticing anything has changed in Kell. His hand and his head are warm against Kell’s right hip and leg, and he shifts a little, letting his hand slide from Holland’s hair over his shoulder, finally resting it on his side. Holland is warm, and real, and alive… and the cold behind his head is dead, and fake, and a trick his mind is playing on him. “They didn’t find a body the whole month we were there. Neither of them wanted to. That’s the only time they went that long without a body that we weren’t out in the w-wilderness.”

_ They didn’t find a victim,  _ Kell corrects in his mind, but doesn’t say. Holland never even notices he’s doing it, calling them ‘bodies’ instead of people. If you point it out, he goes quiet for hours, and Kell figures it’s the weight of all the death settling in until he can lock it safely away again. He’s quiet like that every time he has to go talk to a detective, too, look at new photos of missing people and explain, over and over again, that he almost never  _ saw  _ them.

_ Dead man walking,  _ Astrid says. He hears the sound of chewing from Theon’s cushion pause, and forces himself to calm down, closing his eyes and thinking about his heartbeat, willing it to slow. Theon can’t notice; if he notices, Holland will notice, and he’ll want to help, and all of this is and has been about Kell helping  _ him _ .

He’s built a pretty fucking fragile house of cards and if Holland notices, it’s going to come down.

“We ate a ton of doughnuts the whole month,” Holland says, and he’s smiling, just a little, the way you smile when talking about the time your parents took you to Disneyworld, the way you smile talking about your grandparents or someone who loved you. “Athos wanted doughnuts every day. Astrid hated it, she bitched about Tim Horton’s  _ constantly,  _ said she ‘didn’t understand’ it. But she ate the doughnuts, anyway.” A hint of darkness crosses Holland’s face. “When I fed them to her. And Athos and I really liked it. That was… that was probably the best time, for he and I. We were really good for a while, almost like a real relationship, and it started being really good in Canada. Also, I liked when Astrid taught me to hunt.”

“Astrid taught  _ you _ to-”

“Deer,” Holland says quickly. “Just deer, and setting traps for animals. It… hurt, she made me draw the bow with my bad hand, but I learned, eventually.”

_ They all learn eventually,  _ the dead, rotted woman behind him says softly. He tells himself she’s just ashes now, cremated and hopefully just tossed into a dumpster behind a police station somewhere, but… he can  _ feel  _ her in the room, and it’s hard to believe it.

Theon is watching him, with a careful, worried expression, the brown spots over his eyes furrowed together, but  _ Holland's _ eyes are still closed. He's still smiling, lost in his thoughts. All he has to do is make sure he doesn't notice. 

"You should show me how to do that," Kell says to cover the sound of his heart pounding. "Dad showed us how to hunt with guns but I've never drawn a bow."

"It's a  _ lot  _ harder than it looks. Astrid was really good at it. I was… pretty good, by the end. Maybe I should go practice sometime."

"Maybe you should."

_ You know what else we taught him to be good at… you benefit plenty from that, don't you, you fucking coward? Letting Athos's beautiful boy suffer for you while all you did was  _ lay there  _ and you could have begged, too, but you didn't, did you? _ She says it all with a lazy, sultry hatred flickering through her voice, and he feels her hand run up through the back of his hair. 

Kell pushes himself off the couch so fast he nearly knocks Holland off if it. The other man sits up, hissing a little as it forces him to move his recovering knee, and twists around to look up at Kell. "What's wrong? Should I not have… I said too much, didn't I? I'm s-sorry…"

"No," Kell says quickly, putting his hands out. His stomach flips hard with a wave of guilt ( _ how did I survive when the rest of them died, why did I make him do that when I could have asked to take his place).  _ "No, you were fine. I just realized I need, to, um-" 

He feels sick.

_ Your every breath is a gift, and you don’t have the fucking right to any of it. _

Theon stood up, watching him, head slightly lowered. He whined, low in his throat, a sound Holland knows, because he sees him immediately look over at Theon and then back at Kell.

"Kell?" Holland grabs at his crutch, trying to get himself on his feet, and Kell backs away.

_ You should have died like the rest of them. What gives  _ you _ the right to live? Why did your life mean more than theirs? _

"I-I'll be right back, Holl, I just need to-"

"Kell, don't leave-"

With the cold of her on his heels, Kell makes it out the door and down the front steps, stumbling around the corner to a trio of trees, where he throws up the beer and his dinner and everything he's eaten.

He curls over himself, pulling his knees up to his chest, digging his fingernails into his scalp and his hair.  _ Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. _

He counts, like Holland does, presses two fingers to the pulse in the side of his neck and counts his heartbeats, swallowing against the sour bile taste in his mouth.

He wishes he could remember what she'd said that got him out of the bar, that he knew what she'd  _ done  _ to him. He doesn't know. The only other person who knows what happened in that walk or how he'd gotten wrist cuffs on him that chained him to the van is dead.

He hopes he fought her, but he's pretty sure he didn't.  _ You just laid there, didn’t you? _

He hears the duplex's door open and close, and after a second Theon's cold wet nose presses against his face, and he puts an arm around him. Astrid's cold hand begins to fade, as Theon's warmth drives her out.

He hears Holland, the click and thump of the crutch and his slow footsteps. "Kell?"

"It's fine, just my stomach-"

There's a silence, and then the crutch drops to the ground and Holland awkwardly settles next to him, bad leg straight out and the other pulled to his chest. "It's not fine," He says, and puts a hand, hesitantly, on Kell's shoulder. Kell can see the wedding ring still on his finger, glinting in the streetlights and the evening’s dim light. "Not if Theon felt you."

"It's  _ fine _ ," Kell insists, but he stares up into the leaves of the trees and thinks about the redwoods, impassive as gods waiting to be sacrificed to. "I'm here for  _ you,  _ Holl, it's fine."

"You’re not just here for me," Holland says quietly, and touches the back of Kell's neck, just a little, jerking his band back when Kell jumps. "Hey. Can't I be here for  _ you _ , too?"

Kell puts his hands over his face, feeling his stomach flip again. "Why am I alive, Holland? Why didn’t she just kill me and get it over with?"

There's a pause, and then that hand against his neck again, warm and living. This time, he holds still. "Because she thought I would want you, I guess. That she could make me look at you the way they look…  _ looked _ at me.”

“I’m, um… I’m glad you didn’t,” Kell says softly. He doesn’t remember this part, either, although he’s read the statement Holland gave to the cops and knows well enough what they’d tried to make him do. 

“Yeah, me too. I just… I don’t _ know _ why you’re alive," Holland says quietly. "I don't know why I am, either. Luck, I guess. Our good luck."

"Or somebody else's  _ bad _ luck."

"Or that. Let’s go back inside. Brush your teeth, you can shower and get ready for bed. You should stay with me."

"I always stay with you, you still need help walking," Kell says, and feels Holland relax when there's humor in his voice. Theon licks at his face, at the corner of his mouth, and Kell's pretty sure the dog has never done  _ that _ before.

"I mean stay with me tonight in my  _ room _ . I think you need it." 

_ You don't deserve him,  _ Astrid says in his ear. 

Kell shudders. "I can't. I take care of you. I need to be close to the door, and I wouldn’t want..."

"Kell." Holland leans over, until his forehead bumps against the side of Kell’s head, just a little. "You're my friend, and I only have the one. Let me take care of  _ you _ ."

_ You're my friend. _

_ You fucking coward. _

_ You don't deserve him. _

Kell takes a deep breath, counts to five, and then says slowly, "Holland… I…” If he doesn’t admit to it now, he never will. 

“What?”

“I think _ I'm  _ seeing things, too."

_ How dare you think you have the right to a single solitary breath. _


	36. Hunting Grounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I got a request to write a SKGY piece that involves Astrid and Athos hunting, so here you go! It's Serial Killer Gap Year, so it's dark - you now what you're in for by now, right?
> 
> If you have any requests for one-shots/drabbles that fit any of the AUs here or something ADSOM-related you've wanted to see, let me know? I seem to keep wanting to write them, soooo...

“Honestly, I don’t feel like he was even trying.” Astrid glares absently around the bar, thin fingers gently swirling a tiny red-and-white striped straw around the glass of what could easily be mistaken for water. 

“That’s not fair, Astrid,” Athos says, raising an eyebrow. “It takes time to adapt to a relationship. He’s just getting used to us still."

"It's been two and a half  _ months,  _ Athos. Last night he  _ cried _ when you had him. Honestly, it was such a turn off I had to leave and go pick up a guy at a  _ bar. _ I thought the whole point of bringing him along was that we could have a  _ real  _ boyfriend and stop having one-night stands. Instead, he’s a  _ crier. _ "

"I don't mind that. I like how he looks when he cries. Remember, he told us he hasn’t dated anyone in a while, and it’s not like he’s ever been with anyone like  _ us  _ before. And I  _ know  _ he's never been with  _ two _ before. I asked." Athos grins at her, clearly trying to get her to smile back. She resists the impulse, but it's hard - he's her mirror reflection, and what he does she wants to do, always. It’s that rakish half-sided smile that makes her see him as the boy he still is, inside, where she has always felt ancient, like skin stretched overs tone. "I asked with the knife, so I know he was honest. Besides, he stopped crying once I figured out how to make him  _ really  _ enjoy it."

“Hm. Cried again after, though. I had to get him high to shut him up, I was starting to worry someone would hear and call the front desk."

“Yeah, but you know what he did, once he fell asleep?”

She sighs, because she knows what he’s going to say, and she’ll never ask him not to say it. It makes him so happy, after all, and her whole life is about his happiness, just as his whole life is about hers. She can’t even sound  _ annoyed. _ “What did he do, Athos?”

“He put his head under my chin,” Athos said in a soft, low, deep voice, and this time when he smiles, she really can’t help but return the expression. He is such a romantic, her twin brother. He has all the romance in him that she lacks. He has enough for them both. “He slept like that, against me, for _ hours _ .” 

“I know, Athos. I woke up to fifteen new text messages of the pictures you took.”

“Oh, I took more pictures than that. Those were just the best ones.”

“I just… don’t understand this infatuation, Athos.” Astrid frowns down into the clear liquid, takes a slow, small sip, letting it burn beautifully straight down her throat, the soft, slow burn that lets her know this is the  _ good _ stuff. Sometimes bartenders think she can’t tell the difference and try to offload their crap brands on her, but Astrid has been drinking vodka since she was fifteen years old and she does  _ not  _ appreciate being tricked. “I suppose he's at least mildly entertaining, okay, I’ll give you that much, but he’s still just a body. What do you  _ like _ so much about him, anyway?”

“He’s  _ not _ just a body. I don’t know.” Athos smiles, a little dreamily, and Astrid briefly considers picking his beer up and dumping it over his head. “He’s sweet, isn’t he?”

“He’s  _ something _ , all right.”

“Oh, fuck off. You like him, too, and you know it.”

“Not as much as you do.”

“Well… no. You  _ can't _ like him as much as I do. I think I'm in  _ love,  _ Astrid."

Astrid's eyes roll so hard she nearly sees her own brain. "You have  _ got  _ to be fucking kidding me."

"I'm not! I want to touch him all the time, talk to him, crack his skull open until I know him better than anyone else. I want him to tell me about what he’s reading - sometimes he even  _ does _ , so I know he's interested in me, too. He wouldn’t talk to me if he wasn’t interested in me.”

“You threaten him,” Astrid points out. “You threaten him if he doesn’t talk to you.”

“Still. I want to keep all the evidence, with him, even if it means I could get caught one day." Athos's voice gets louder, forgetting to keep it lower than the music. "I want to keep  _ everything _ , Astrid. I want to remember every single sound he’s ever made. Last time I went down on him-"

Someone sitting nearby coughs into one hand and the two twins shoot him simultaneous glares.

"Mind your fucking business," Astrid snaps. "You'd fuck him, too, if you saw him. You should see the face he makes when I grab his  _ hair  _ when Athos is with him." The man stares at them, the wide-eyed terrified look of someone who has seen underneath the person-costume Astrid wears over her face when she’s out with the bodies, and looks uncomfortably away. 

After a second, the strange man simply stands up and leaves the table entirely, and Astrid lets her gaze weigh down on his back until he disappears fully into the crowd. When she turns back Athos is smiling again. This time, she smiles back. "Okay, fine, yes, I like him. A  _ little. _ "

"He's going to be so happy to see us when we come back," Athos says, and she has to admit it… he  _ does  _ sound like a man in the first throes of love. He's only been like this a couple of times before.

Most of their relationships only last until the person realizes they will be  _ shared _ \- a lot of them leave, early on, when that comes up. But Astrid and Athos share everything, and there was never any question that they will share lovers, too. The people who could handle that stick around longer, and Astrid still keeps in touch with a couple of them. Or she did, before Mother died and they had decided to drive out into the world and see what there was to be seen.

Some of them  _ mind _ , though. They don’t like the sharing. Craig had not minded, not at first, but _ later _ he had - had said there was too much blood in their games, that he was scared of them. He’d found some other girl, hadn’t even asked Astrid’s permission first. He had waited too long to leave, Astrid had genuinely liked him by then. Some of the others… well. 

They ended up like Craig, in the end.

Holland won't be a part of either group, it seems. No, Athos won’t let him leave and he won’t even consider making him disappear. Holland, it seems, is here to stay. Astrid has yet to decide how she feels about that. 

She takes another drink, thinking of how he looks when he sobers up, long enough for Athos to get him into the shower, long enough for things to start really sinking in before she makes sure he drifts away again. Athos is wistful for dreams of the day he will smile without being ordered to; Astrid is content to picture the despair he shows, instead.

The vodka is clear fire down her throat, and it is absolutely perfect.

They’re hunting, tonight, so she’s sticking to just the one glass. You have to keep your head clean and sober or you risk mucking it up, making mistakes. Athos makes mistakes, sometimes, on his own, and it is Astrid who must be there to make sure those mistakes don’t lead to arrests, convictions, or - the worst thing she can imagine - a separation.

Astrid’s worst nightmares are of she and Athos being forced apart. They have never been apart before, and she doesn’t know that she could be apart from him now. He is her reflection, the half of her that isn’t attached, and she thought that if ever they were apart, they would simply lose their minds. She has nothing to live for without him, and to keep going in a world of bodies, you need something to live for.

_ You can never let him make a mistake, Astrid. _

_ Of course, Mama. _

_ You have always been my careful child, he has always been the one who will not see the mud on his hands. _

_ Yes, Mama. _

_ Promise me that you will help him keep his head. _

_ I promise, Mama, I will always be here for him - he can run as fast as he wants and I will make sure they never catch him. _

_ Good girl.  _

There was never any question, of course. She was always devoted to him and he to her and they would always have taken care of each other. Mother had only asked to hear the words said out loud; she’d known as well as the two of them did that they were nothing without each other, just synapses that fired off-kilter, a song that went off-key.

Together, they were a symphony. Together, they got the blood on their hands, freed the bodies that had no right to breathe, gave the breath and the bones and the blood back to the earth. Always, they were together. Even when one of them hunts alone, the other is waiting for their return, phone in hand, just in case. 

Except, of course, that sometimes these days Athos  _ isn’t _ holding his phone; he’s holding the man from Maryland, the one that he’s head over heels for, the one whose eyes are a beautifully empty green. Sometimes it takes him ring after ring after ring to pick up the phone, and she can hear Holland in the background.

She’s not jealous; what belongs to Athos belongs to her, too, and how can you be jealous of a possession that is already yours?

Astrid is wearing her favorite pair of black jeans, the ones that only  _ look  _ skintight but are nearly as soft and stretchy as leggings. She has her full range of motion in these, good for long walks, for dragging heavy things. She’s got her good boots on, too, the ones that are easy to run in, and a light tank top. 

There’s a knife tucked into one boot, but that’s the only weapon she’s currently carrying. Anyone who needs a gun clearly doesn’t have the skillset required to free the bodies and should leave that work to professionals, ayway. Guns are blunt instruments, good only in moments of pure desperation.

Knives, now; with knives, Astrid Dane is an  _ artist. _

The rest of the supplies for hunting and cleanup are in the car, but so is Holland, and she doesn’t want to wake him up just to root around in the trunk.

_ Ugh, I’m turning into Athos about him. _

She’d picked the new car specifically for Holland, too, just because of that nice spacious trunk. It had a sort of removable foldover at the back, making sure Holland got plenty of air. He’d been sleeping in it, while they decided whether or not he was ready to drive, for a couple of days now. Before this new car, they’d had to keep him under a blanket in the backseat and that had started to get a little too risky.

Of course, now every time he’s halfway sober he begs to be let out of the trunk, so it’s got its own inconveniences. Not that Athos minds pulling him out to sit with him in the back while Astrid drives. And Astrid doesn’t really mind having him sit with her, either. 

Still, the  _ begging.  _ In bed, it’s nice - on the road, it’s so annoying she wants to grind her teeth together and scream.

It’s just a balancing act every day with him, and Astrid would have killed him  _ ages _ ago if it weren’t for the new light in Athos’s eyes, in the way he’s just so  _ happy.  _ Sometimes he could even sate the itch with Holland and no one had to die that night.

It’s… unnerving. She’s never seen Athos like this before.

Looking at the bright lines of his face now and thinking of the way he’d looked so brilliantly vibrant, so wildly  _ alive  _ when they’d bashed Holland’s hand with the hammer… she wishes she could feel half the love that Athos had felt when Holland screamed for him.

Screamed and screamed, his head buried in Athos’s chest when he was pulled to him. Astrid had let go of him where she’d been holding him still, and she and Athos had smiled at each other. Athos put one arm around him, gripping him by the hair to slowly pull his head back so their eyes met, Athos’s glacial blue and Holland’s mossy, deep green, wide and only half-seeing, wracked with pain.

_ Will you try to get someone to notice you again? _

_ N-No, I won’t, I swear I won’t, I swear... _

Athos had looked at him with pure love shining out of every single pore and he had said, softly,  _ Thank me for teaching you this lesson. _

Astrid feels a stirring as she thinks of the memory, smiling faintly, sipping at the vodka. She heats up just remembering the way Holland fought it at first, fought to keep some shred of his dignity and refused to say the words, until Athos had taken the broken hand and tightened his grip, forcing shards of broken bone together until Holland had half-cried, half-screamed his thanks for the lesson.

_ Ask me to take you to bed now. _

He’d looked up at Astrid as he said the words and winked at her, and she’d grinned back, taking the hint and moving to give them some privacy. That was the thing about these shared hotel rooms; when one of them needed some alone time with their new boyfriend, the other one had to vacate the premises. She’d gone out listening to Holland ask, stumbling over the words, and smoked cigarette after cigarette until she could come down from the high of his pain. 

That had been a good, good night. 

Astrid swallows hard, her eyes skipping around the bar again. She needs to find someone soon, these thoughts are making her itch worse than ever. “I doubt he’ll be all  _ that _ happy,” She says, frowning at her brother, wondering at the inside of his mind. There is so, so little of Athos she does not know, but his affection for Holland Vosijk is a mystery to her. They have killed and killed and no one has ever caught his interest like this before. There have been other beautiful men, other pretty women, and Athos has never wanted to bring any of  _ them _ back to the hotel in the end. “I know that he makes  _ you  _ happy, but I don’t think that feeling goes both ways.”

“Not yet, but give him time. You have to  _ teach  _ someone how to love you. You have to show them that it’s not worth even _ trying  _ not to. He needs to understand that, Astrid, that I’m the only thing he has left. Once he really  _ gets  _ that, he’s going to really start to change. You’ll see.”

His voice is so certain, so sure of himself, that she finds herself carried along by it. 

“Whatever you say.”

Then she sees the man by the door, and immediately she knows him for what he is. A blond, but his hair is more yellow than the whitish-gold, nearly a silver, that Athos and Astrid share. It’s cut short, but falls over his forehead nearly to his eyebrows. He’s got the looks, but those are a dime a dozen - it’s the hint of loneliness she reads on him that makes Astrid feel her fingers twitch.

This man is here alone, and he is  _ lonely.  _ He’s a body no one will miss. He doesn’t deserve the air he breathes.

None of them do.

But then, Holland had been a body, too, until Athos had decided he wasn’t. How did he separate? She doesn’t know, and Athos can’t ever explain it to her in a way that sinks in. How does he look at Holland, with his  _ fears  _ and his  _ pleading,  _ and see a person with value, someone worth keeping alive?

It can’t be how good he is in bed; Astrid  _ knows  _ just how good he is, they’ve been patiently teaching him how to be better, and it’s never affected how  _ she  _ sees him. 

“There,” She breathes out, and Athos follows her gaze. After a moment, he sees the man, too, and a different sort of smile lights up his face. “That one.”

“He’s lonely,” Athos says out loud. He can smell them, too, in the end. Both of them, honed by more than a decade of hunting, can smell prey. 

“He’s all by himself tonight,” Astrid murmurs, swirling her tiny little straw again. 

“No one will miss him right away,” Athos continues, picking up his beer and draining the rest. He and Astrid stand as one, and without speaking Athos moves to the doorway. They’ve already scoped out the area around this little bar, and decided what alley she’ll take the prey down. Astrid and her conquest will be at one end, and Athos will be in a shadow at the other, and by the time the man walks down the alley, he will already be dead and just won’t realize it yet.

The bodies never know they’re dead, that they don’t deserve to live. They all beg, and plead, to be spared. Astrid never listens, and Athos has only listened once.

In a trunk in a car out in the parking lot, Holland Vosijk is sleeping off the latest round of things Astrid has given him to keep him quiet, with his hands handcuffed behind his back and his ankles tied together, the two connected by a rope so he can’t free himself enough to kick or garner any attention. When they’re done, they’ll lay the body down on a tarp and take Holland out to put in the backseat.

Probably they’ll take him right there in the car after they’re done disposing of the body; one of them usually does. He’s usually sober enough to get that strange despairing look on his face, but not enough to try and fight back.

He fights less and less, since Athos broke his hand. Sometimes when Athos asks him to hold him, he even does, puts his good arm around her brother and buries his face in Athos’s neck.

It’s nice, to be honest, to see him being so good, but… she sort of misses when he fought harder. He scratched her across the face once and it felt like  _ living,  _ like being  _ alive.  _ She’d licked her own blood off her fingers instead of his, and it woke her up, made her remember that Danes can die, too.

Sometimes she forgets that Danes can die.

Astrid would have killed him back in Maryland, alongside his roommate, but Athos has never been in love before, not like this, and there is nothing -  _ nothing  _ \- that Astrid Dane will deny her brother. 

They are two halves of the same whole, and she will spend her life helping him with his. He will spend his life by her side. 

They will never, ever be apart - and Holland is a part of them now, and she will never let him walk away from her brother’s love, not for a single second. Not even in death.

Astrid picks her glass up in her hand and as Athos goes out the door to wait, she sidles herself up to the lonely blond man, who turns to look at her with blatant interest, not seeing the coiled serpent behind her warm blue eyes.

“Hey,” She says softly, stirring her drink again, tilting her head so a bit of hair falls across her cheek. “You waiting for someone?”

“No,” He says back, and his voice is deep. He smiles at her, flashing perfect white teeth, and she wonders if Athos will keep any for the envelope of teeth he has in his duffel bag. He likes teeth; they’re like little white marbles, he clicks them together sometimes and Holland’s face goes green when he does. “I’m Col. What’s your name?”

“Alice,” She replies, and it’s close enough, isn’t it? Her voice is warm, and sweet, and soft.

Astrid wears her person-costume, and the man doesn’t know any better, and he has less than two hours to live. **   
**


	37. I'll Wake You Up (SKGY)

_ “Happy anniversary?”  _

_ Kell looked up, bleary-eyed, aware of his wrists up above his head, wrapped in a soft green leather with brass hardware pulled tight around them and buckled shut, so tight it hurt a little, made the ends of his fingers a little numb. _

_ A chain looped over the metal rail installed along the ceiling, and when he tried to pull free, it rattled, and it sounded like a song. _

_ Right. The ketamine. He'd been so fucking high. Holland was beautiful, the first time he saw him, a stained-glass man about to shatter and Kell hoped he'd be the one cut by all the pretty shards. _

_ He rattled the chain again, just to hear its perfect sound. _

_ "No, no, you bad dog," Astrid said and laughed at him, ruffling his hair, her fingers like ice. "You're not going anywhere." _

_ Holland was standing at the back of the van, staring in at him. Athos stood beside him - fuck, Kell had forgotten how terrifying Athos was, with blue eyes that seemed to almost glow in the dark, reflecting the light back at him like a cat. Athos had a hand on his shoulder, grip slowly tightening into the fabric of the cutoff t-shirt with  _ My Favorite Drinking Game is Drink Until I Like It  _ written on the front. _

you didn't forget you remember it it's just hiding you've hidden it from yourself what did you hide kell

_ He saw the green eyes, wide, too wide with surprise and horror, the hand over his mouth slowly dropping back down to his side. _

his hands are so good long fingers did I remember he has long fingers or was that new to me the first time he touched me

when was the first time

_ All of it shimmered like the air above a fire, a little surreal, a little broken. _

_ “Look what I got you,” Astrid said to Holland, in a low purring voice, using her grip on Kell's hair to pull his head back, exposing his throat, lifting his chin. "A pretty one, right? Such a pretty boy for you. He came with me all on his own." _

_ Kell tried to protest, but there was something in his mouth, something hard and round and plastic that pressed down on his tongue and up against the roof of his mouth, and he could feel cloth knotted tight behind his head to hold it in. _

_ He was gagged. He was gagged because she'd drugged him and put him in a van to die but decided to give him to Holland instead first, a present- _

no don't think about it don't you don't want to remember it forget forget forget

_ Between it all he was helpless, legs out in front of him, heavy as bricks, weighted down to the carpeted floor of the van by something around his ankles, either stones or the drugs or simple fear. _

why weren’t you dead by now

why didn’t she just kill you like she did all the others

what about you did she think holland would like

_ "He did?" Holland asked, and the horror in his face changed, just a little. It focused on  _ him. _ "You came with her  _ willingly?  _ You left the bar? She didn’t have to force you?" _

_ "Lila  _ told _ you not to leave the bar," Astrid said, leaning over and licking her tongue up the side of his face. "She told you not to leave and you left anyway. Did you need to get some ass that badly, puppy? Am I that pretty?" _

_ He couldn't answer; all he could do was stare, wide-eyed, at Holland, and make a muffled sound around the thing in his mouth.  _

_ He tried to ask for help or to explain he’d been drugged, he hadn’t been in his right mind, but all that came out was "hhhmmmnfff." _

_ “You didn’t even try to run from her,” Holland said, and his tone had changed, too, gotten colder. “What kind of weak-ass man are you?” _

_ "It’s the kind of man I got you," Astrid said, petting at Kell's hair and down the back of his neck. "It's a man, just for you." _

_ “I know,” Holland replied, and his voice was ragged, and no, the judgement wasn’t there in his eyes, he still looked scared, uncertain, unsure. “I see it’s a man. I s-s-see… y-you got me a m-man, Astrid?" _

he stammers when he’s scared, he was so scared of them but he still asked for help he was so brave

_ "Its name is Kell," Astrid said, lovingly, softly. "Say hello to Holland, Kell. Although he may want you to call him something else, later." _

_ Kell, gagged and with his hands cuffed to a bar above his head, just blinked, wondering what she expected him to  _ do _ . Astrid's fingers still gripped his hair and she shook his head hard.  _

_ "I  _ said _ , say hello, flower boy." _

_ Kell made some kind of sound through the gag, something like ‘heh-oh’, the only thing he could think of to do was obey her. He didn’t fight. He didn’t pull away; he just did as he was told, like he was meant for this, like he’d been born just to die in the back of a van. _

_ He tried to say ‘I’m going to die’, but he couldn’t remember if he really said it or not. _

I'm about to die right now but I don't die because because because why why didn’t I die

_ Holland closed his eyes, and Kell thought he looked like some kind of homeless punk saint and let out a weird high-pitched giggle from behind the gag. He was so fucking beautiful, Holland was, even when he had all the metal in his face and his ears, even when he was scared, when he called Kell into his room just to sit next to him until he fell asleep. _

_ There was blood on his arm, running down to his shoulder, over his chest and down his side, from a long, thin, trailing cut. _

_ The cut came from the knife she had strapped to her thigh. She'd licked the blood, first, and told him he tasted like flowers. _

is this what happened? I don't remember I didn't want to remember because I didn't fight back what made me worth keeping alive? was it just chance? 

_ “Do you like it?" Astrid asked Holland, whose eyes glittered like stars now, and his glass had shattered. Holland was a name like a ceramic bowl and the man, the man was cracked all down his face. _

holland cracks did I think that did he say it did I say it holland cracks

_ "Do you like your anniversary gift?" She asked, pushing a little, head tilted. Her lips were red, too red, smeared with blood.  _

_ Holland had told him, one bad night, that there was a right way and a wrong way to answer their questions. That he got hurt, when he answered them wrong. Hurt and hurt and then Athos, Athos would hold him until he felt better. Holland had said sometimes he couldn’t remember if hurt was a good thing or a bad thing, because when they hurt him, they told him how loved he was, over and over again, until he believed it. They told him no one would ever love him but them, that they were the only ones who would stay with someone who kept making such stupid fucking mistakes, who kept trying to leave. _

I won’t leave you why aren’t I dead god damn it I should be dead like all the others I should be dead I should be dead

_ Holland put his hands up over his face. “Astrid, I…” _

wrong answer wrong answer wrong answer

_ “Well?” Her voice dropped, went a little lower, and Kell watched Holland flinch. “I went to so much effort for you. He's just your type, isn't he? You like them taller than you. You like them snivelling little  _ fucking  _ cowards who let you take all the pain. Don’t you  _ like _ it?” _

_ Holland kept his hands over his face, breathing hard, panting breaths that filled the back of the van, and Athos leaned over and kissed his neck, scratched his fingers along the back of it where the tattoo was, and Kell heard Holland's breath catch. _

he likes it when you touch his neck like that I remember he told me the first time, the first time where we actually, when we did, when we

was that the first time? or was the first time here? I don’t remember what happened in the van

_ Astrid tilted her head, one cold hand sliding down Kell's back and up under his shirt, fingers playing over the knobs of his spine, the silvery stretch-mark scars from when he'd grown six inches in less than a year as a teenager. “Look at me. Put your hands down.” _

_ Holland looked at Kell, tilted his head, and smiled.  _

_ "Of course I do. Look at that fucking face.” _

wait this isn't right holland no no no

_ No, Kell tried to say, but all he did was make some formless panicked noise around the gag. Astrid grabbed the knot of cloth behind his head and jerked it hard, yanking his head back so hard he groaned. _

_ “Shush, pet,” Astrid said, soothing even as her grip pulled the cloth against the corners of Kell's mouth until it burned, until he could feel the thin skin starting to tear. He closed his eyes against tears, against his pounding heart. “Oh, Holland. You're our good boy, aren’t you?” _

_ Holland laughed, a sharp sound, totally unlike the soft, shy laughter Kell could coax out of him only on his best days. Athos kissed his neck again and Holland tilted his head to the side to make it easier for him, smiling as he watched Kell with hooded eyes. "Yes," he said, voice husky in a way that Kell had never heard. "I'm your good boy. Does that mean he gets to be mine?" _

_ “Almost.” She stroked Kell's hair, gently, gently, and Athos’s arm was still around Holland. "But we died, darling. Because of  _ him.  _ I was going to let him be your good boy, but it never worked out that way, did it? It’s okay, though. He can be your good boy now. Don't you love me, Holl-Doll?” _

_ Athos murmured, “Don't you love us both so much?" _

_ Holland looked at his own left hand, at the ring he still wore, then over at Kell. ”God, yes," he breathed, and Kell watched him shudder as Athos ran a hand over his stomach, fingers running over the ring at his navel. “I love you, I love you so much.” Those green eyes trailed along the back of the van until they met Kell’s again, and his lip curled. “I fucking  _ hate  _ you.” _

that was the first piercing he took out the one on his stomach something is wrong this isn't what happened this can’t be what happened he doesn’t hate me he doesn’t

_ “You love both of us?” Astrid smiled, a flash of teeth like white knives. “Athos and I both?” _

_ “Both of you." Athos's hand slipped under the waistband of Holland's jeans, and he smiled, still, smiled and smiled, letting his head fall back against Athos’s shoulder, black hair mingling with silvery blond. "I don't give a shit about Kell. He's just a body."  _

_ Kell froze. Then he jerked on the chain that held him as hard as he could, but he was held too tightly, his wrists ached with the pressure. His head beat so hard in his chest, and Holland moved to climb into the van, reaching up to lay a hand over Kell's chest.  _

_ He couldn't help himself; grown man or not, he whimpered. _

_ "Oh, listen to that. So fucking  _ scared.  _ You goddamn little boy, you didn't even try to fight, did you? You watched him fuck me and the most you could do was hold my hand? And you thought I’d be grateful for that?” _

I did I did I tried to get up but the drugs I was too far gone I couldn't move they said the ketamine made me go limp they said please holland no please please I’m so sorry I didn’t fight I never wanted you to have to take it all for me

_ Athos went in after him and closed the doors, and it was dark, and Kell was breathing hard around the gag, drooling around it, staring into Holland's awful eyes, his sneering smile.  _

_ "You scared, body?” Holland said, and his voice was low, teasing, just shy of flirting. “I know you are. I can  _ feel  _ it. You  _ should  _ be scared, you piece of shit. Who the fuck do you think you are? What did you think would happen? Did you think you have the right to still be breathing?” Holland gripped him by the hair, holding tight with a right hand that somehow wasn’t broken, digging his fingers in and pulling until Kell groaned at the ache. He leaned in, close, and whispered against Kell’s mouth, “Do you think they can't still take your life from you?"" _

no please I just wanted to take care of you

_ “Holland,” Astrid sang, rubbing at Kell’s lower back as Holland’s hand let go of his hair and found its way to close fingers slowly around his throat. Kell pulled on the chains, but nothing happened, he was a mouse in a trap, with three sets of predator’s eyes staring him down, trying to decide how to split him in three parts, a little for each of them to devour. “I want to play a game.” _

_ “I like games,” Holland said, as Athos moved onto Kell’s other side. The backseat of the van was against his back and there was one of them on every side, Athos on his left, Astrid on his right, Holland in front of him. He was dizzy with fear, and their hands were on him, they wouldn’t stop  _ touching  _ him and he couldn’t move, he couldn’t get free, his wrists burned when he pulled and he couldn’t get  _ free.

_ Athos nuzzled in against the side of his face and Kell felt tears running out from his closed eyes where he’d screwed them shut as tight as they would go. He couldn’t look anymore, he couldn’t look at how much Holland hated him. _

_ “Oh, darling, I know you do.” Astrid laughed, and Holland laughed along with her, and Kell tried to pull away from the sound but Holland grabbed him by the chin and held him still. “The game,” Astrid continued, reaching over to undo the button on his jeans, “is called ‘fuck him.’” _

_ “Oh, good, he’ll like that game, too,” Athos said, chuckling low in Kell’s ear. He flinched to his right, only to run into Astrid’s cold mouth, kissing his cheek, licking the salt of his tears off of him. “He wanted you to, didn’t he?” _

_ “Sure he did,” Astrid said softly. “That’s the only reason he even wanted to help you, our little puppy had a crush on you, didn’t he?” _

_ “Probably,” Holland said dryly. "Thought we'd get our happily ever after if he killed off the people who  _ actually _love me. You're a fucking joke, Kell Maresh. You don't deserve to be the survivor."_

_ Kell shook his head frantically, because that hadn’t been it, it had just been that he thought Holland needed a friend and he didn’t have any left. It had just been that Kell couldn’t stop seeing Rhy’s bloody head, he couldn’t stop wanting to be there next time, to be there to help, because he was always- _

_ “You’re always too late,” Holland said, sliding a hand up over his cheek, rubbing his thumb across his cheekbone. He moved the hand back behind his head, untied the knot with easy one-handed expertise, and pulled the gag, finally, out of Kell’s mouth. _

_ He took in deep gasping breaths, grateful for the cool air against his tongue and his teeth, so fucking grateful to breathe so easily.  _

_ "You wanted someone to save, Kell? You wanted someone to take care of?” Holland laughed again, and Kell felt Astrid’s hand at his back and Athos at his stomach holding him still as Holland gripped his hair to hold him still and kissed him, bruising and painful. “I’ll be that for you. I'll be so  _ helpless _ for you, Red. You'll be my fucking  _ hero _ . You can sleep in the bed with me, you can guard the door, and I won’t ever bring up that you let me beg for you, you let me give him  _ everything,  _ promise him anything, and what did you do?” _

_ When he didn’t answer, Holland slapped him, and his head jerked to the side with the impact. “N-nothing,” Kell whispered. “I didn’t do anything to help you.” _

_ “Exactly. So I’ll pretend you’re my hero, but you’re not, are you? But I’ll pretend. Will that make you happy? Is that what you want?” _

_ “No,” he whispered when Holland let his mouth free. “I just wanted to help, I sw-swear, I just wanted to help-” _

_ “You shouldn’t even be alive. They killed so many people, better people than you. People with kids, people with jobs, people who deserved a second chance. All of those better people died, but you’re still here. Why you? Why are you the one who got to live, the  _ only one _ who survived them?” _

_ “I don’t know, I don’t-... I don’t know, I keep asking and no one can tell me, no one seems to know what was different about me-” _

_ “I was,” Holland said softly. “ I was the difference. The difference was that I saved you. The difference was that I  _ begged _ for you. You didn’t deserve it more than anyone else. You don’t have the right to keep breathing. I’m the only reason you breathe.” _

_ He looked into the other man’s eyes, and Holland hated him so much. _

_ “What will you do for me now, Kell?” Holland leaned in close, dropping his voice to a whisper. He reached out, let his hand move down Kell's chest and over his stomach, until it settled over the zipper of his jeans, his meaning incredibly, horribly clear.“What will you do for me if I save you?” _

_ “A-anything,” Kell said, and his voice had a jagged whining edge to it, a plea, too much panic and fear to control. “I’ll do anything, Holland, anything for you-” _

_ “Here, Holl-Doll,” Astrid said, pulling the knife from the garter at her thigh, handing it over. Holland took it with a smile, closing his hand slowly around the handle (the hilt? What was the handle of a knife called, anyway?). “Fuck him up.” _

_ “Gladly.” Holland used the knife to cut his shirt off, and this had happened, hadn’t it? His shirt had been cut up the middle of his chest when they found it at the crime scene in the woods, discarded and pulled off of him when Athos had wanted to paint them with blood. But he hadn’t remembered who cut it. _

Holland how much of this happened please don’t hurt me please no please

_ “Wh-what are you going to do?” He asked in a hushed voice, and listened to the twins laugh, one on either side of him, a chorus of their voices that deafened all the thoughts in his brain. “What are you going to do to me?” _

_ “He’s going to fuck you,” Astrid said with barely-restrained glee. “It’s going to hurt.” _

_ Kell tried to steady his breathing. He could handle that. He could take that. That wouldn’t be so bad, that wouldn’t- _

_ “But first,” Athos said from his other side, and they held him perfectly still even as he tried to free himself somehow, to pull away from the ice of their fingers at his spine and over his hip. “First, he’s going to cut you.” _

_ “Cut an H,” Holland said, voice flat, letting the top of the knife trail over Kell’s heart, almost a tickle from the edge of the blade. “You can be my good boy, now, because you took them away from me. So we’ll show everyone that you’re mine, because you don’t deserve to be anything else. You made me be  _ alone,  _ and you expect me to be grateful for you.” _

_ “Holland, no- please, don’t, please-” _

_ “Shut up,” Holland snapped at him, as cold as the twins, grabbing his chin so tight he’d have bruises in the morning. He forced Kell’s head back until it hit the padded backseat behind him, so he couldn’t see, his eyes were staring up into the roof of the van, up at his own wrists, at his hands clenched in helpless fists. _

_ Holland started to cut into him, and it didn’t hurt, not exactly - and it should hurt, shouldn’t it? It should hurt, but Kell didn’t feel anything at all except for fear. _

_ Holland began to force the blade of the knife into him, and Kell let out a strangled scream to the sound of the twins laughing on either side of him. _

_ “I wish you had died instead of him,” Holland said, and the knife slid easily, effortlessly, into his heart.  _

Kell woke up when he slammed shoulder-first into the floor, having rolled off the couch. His head smacked into the hardwood next, and he groaned, heart pounding, trying to figure out where he was, hands scrambling out, wrists aching from being restrained-

No. He wasn’t restrained. He’d been asleep.

He was on his back on the floor, staring off to the side at the underside of a coffee table he’d narrowly missed, covered in cold sweat. He couldn’t move his legs and for a half-second he panicked, terrified he’d look down and they’d be tied together with rope, or the green leather, or-

Just the blanket. Just tangled in the blanket. Kell let his head fall back against the floor, closing his eyes, forcing himself to slow his breathing. It was pitch-black in here, only the vaguest hint of light through the blinds from the streetlight just outside Holland’s duplex. The only sound was the ticking of the ancient hanging wall-clock in the kitchen and the soft, nearly-silent hum of the new fridge they’d bought when the old one finally gave up.

_ I wish you had died instead of him. _

He heard the creak of Holland’s door opening, the skittering click of Theon’s toenails on the hardwoods. “Kell?” Holland called out, but his voice was low and soft, and it didn’t sound like the Holland in his dream had at all. “D-did you hear that? Kell?”

He didn’t answer. He just laid there on the floor as Theon trotted around the side of the couch and sniffed at his face, wet nose leaving a trail across his forehead and his cheeks. 

Kell didn’t open his eyes. He still didn’t move. None of it seemed real, he was still wrapped in dreams like spiderwebs that wouldn’t quite let go.

He heard the sound of Holland’s crutch moving across the floor, over to him, as Theon apparently decided the sniff-test was complete and wandered over to his cushion, flopping down with his eyes focused entirely on Holland’s slow progress across the room. 

Holland leaned himself against the couch, and Kell finally opened his eyes to look up at Holland, upside-down from his angle, looking down at him. 

“Hey, Holl,” He said.

“Hey,” Holland replied, and Holland didn’t hate him at all. “Are you a-a-all right? I heard a sound…”

“I fell off the couch,” Kell said, trying to shrug, although the motion just wasn’t all that effective lying down. He hesitated, then asked in a low voice, “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah. Do you need help getting up?” Holland frowned down at his crutch. “I’m not going to be easy to balance against, but-”

“No.” He closed his eyes again. “Listen. Do you wish it had been me and not him? That I was dead and he was here with you?”

"Do I _what?”_ There was a silence, and it drew out and out and out until Kell could have thrown something just to break it. “Kell, I-”

“No, don’t answer. It was a stupid question. Go back to bed. I’ll get back up on the couch, just… I just need a minute.” 

_ You don’t deserve him,  _ her voice slid along the back of his mind, sinuous as a snake’s and hard as a diamond. 

_ I know,  _ he thought back to her, and could almost feel the ache in his chest where the knife had gone through. It could have ended so differently, and Holland and Athos and Astrid Dane would have driven away, maybe dumped Kell’s body in a creek in the woods first, and maybe that would have been better, from Holland’s perspective, if Kell had never left that van alive.

He realized Holland hadn’t moved, and slowly he opened his eyes again, looking back to see the older man was still staring down at him. “What?”

“What did you dream about?”

“... I don’t want to tell you. It’s not important, it was just a stupid nightmare-”

“I have nightmares, too. Are mine stupid?”

“No, but they had you-”

“For three years. I get it. I remember the timespan.” A bit of wry humor was in his voice as he maneuvered himself carefully and sat down on the couch, letting his bad knee stick straight out while the other bent. He had to sort of edge around Kell to do it, and finally Kell just sat up, rubbing at the side of his head where he’d hit the floor. 

Holland patted the couch next to him, and Kell managed to untangle his legs from the blanket, half-kicking, half-pulling it off. He pulled himself up onto the couch, curling himself nearly in half so he could lay on his side, his head on Holland’s leg. Holland was tense, for just a second - just long enough for Kell to notice it - and then he relaxed, all at once. 

Theon raised his head, but after looking the two of them over thoughtfully, the dog rested his chin back on his paws again and let out a deep, heavy sigh.

“Kell,” Holland said softly.

“I know.” He closed his eyes, focusing on the warmth of Holland’s leg through his pajama pants, of the way it felt when he curled the fingers of his bad hand around Kell’s shoulder, closed only to the second knuckle, even an attempt to hold tight only the faintest brush of skin. “I’ll call her tomorrow and set an appointment.”

“That’s not what I was going to say, although you absolutely should. I know… I know you h-have a hard time with the, uh, the r-r-r… the r-”

“The ring.”

“Yeah. And what it means, that it means I l-loved-... that I did. But… if you stood with him in front of me, Kell, I’d choose you. I-I wish he were still alive. I dream about getting to visit him in prison, and I would… he’d hate being anywhere without her, prison would be hard for him.” An old, weary affection was in his voice, and Kell hated the way he talked about Athos Dane, hated that you could just force someone to love you and then die trying to abduct them and still they  _ kept loving you.  _ “I’d go see him. I just… if I had to give  _ you  _ up, I wouldn’t. I like that I got to save you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Kell was nearly asleep again already, somehow the terror of the dream was sloughing off of him as he laid here with a warm hand on his shoulder. “Do I deserve to be the one that got to live?”

“I can’t answer for any of the others. For all that time I never got a chance to save someone. It was never an option, I could never… I c-couldn’t. Once… just the once… he loved me enough to let me save you.” Holland bent himself over, leaned down until he could kiss Kell’s hair. “I think it’s the best thing I ever did, and I’d save you again. You’re a pretty good friend, Kell Maresh. Now go back to sleep.”

“What about you?” Kell mumbled, words slurring together. 

“I’m going to read my book for a while. I don’t… I don’t go back to sleep easily once I’m up. Just keep your eyes closed.” Holland reached over to turn on the lamp at the side table, picking up the book he’d left lying there, the first thing Kell had seen him reading that wasn’t one of Dr. Rosa’s trauma books.  _ Progress,  _ he’d said to Kell with a shy smile when they stood together in the bookstore, Holland close enough that his arm brushed Kell’s from sheer nervousness, Theon in his little vest on the other side, the two of them standing guard.  _ Progress is being interested in things again, right? In caring about something new? _

Even the warm yellow light from the lamp couldn’t stop Kell from drifting. Even the hint of her cold fingertips across the skin of his arm couldn’t quite fight the comfort of being here with him, even the whisper of her in his mind wasn’t louder than Holland’s steady, relaxed breathing.

“But what if I dream again?”

Holland laughed, and it was the soft, shy laughter Kell loved. 

“Then I’ll wake you up.”


End file.
